Churchill, Manitoba
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Churchill, Manitoba, is a town on the shore of Hudson Bay in Manitoba, Canada, situated at a latitude of 58.47 N. The small community stands at an ecotone, the juncture of two ecoregions: the boreal forest to the south, and the Arctic tundra to the north. With a population of 963[1] in 2001 versus a population of 1028 in 2000, Churchill is experiencing a severe drop in population. It is most famous for the many polar bears that move toward the shore from inland in the autumn, leading it to being nicknamed the "Polar Bear Capital of the World".
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History
A variety of nomadic Arctic people lived and hunted in this region. The Thule people arrived around 1000 from further west, and later evolved into the present-day Inuit culture. The Dene people arrived around 500 from further north. Since before the time of European contact, the region around Churchill has been predominantly inhabited by the Chipewyan peoples.
Europeans first arrived in the area in the late 1600s. The first permanent settlement was a log fort built at the mouth of the Churchill River in 1717 as a part of the extensive fur-trading network established by the Hudson's Bay Company - mostly to capitalize on the northern trade, out of the reach of York Factory. The town gains its name from John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough, who was governor of the Hudson's Bay Company in the late 1600s and an ancestor of Winston Churchill. The company replaced it with Prince of Wales Fort, a large stone fort finished in 1741. The fort was taken without firing a shot by French warships and razed in 1782, and a new fort was built a short ways upriver. It dealt mainly with the Chipewyan peoples living north of the boreal forest. Due to it's distance from the lands of heavy competition between the North-West Company and Hudson's Bay Company, it maintained a relatively stable, if not extravagantly profitable, source of furs.
Between the years of decline in the fur trade and surfacing of western agricultural success, Churchill phased into and then back out of obsolescence. After decades of frustration over the monopoly/domination of the Canadian Pacific Railroad and then the false promises of the Canadian National Railroad, Western governments banded together and fought for the creation of a rail line north from Winnipeg to Churchill, the Hudson Bay Railway. However, construction and use of the railroad was extremely slow and the rail line itself did not come to Churchill until 1929. Once the link from farm to port was completed commercial shipping took many years to pick-up. In 1932 Grant MacEwan was the first person to cross through Churchill customs as a passenger. This was purely due to his determination in taking the Hudson Bay route home from Britain - otherwise, a passenger would return via the Saint Lawrence.
This area was also the site of the Churchill Rocket Research Range, part of Canadian-American atmospheric research. Its first rocket was launched in 1956, and it continued to host launches for research and commercial satellites until closing in 1984. The site of the former rocket range now hosts the Churchill Northern Studies Centre, a facility for Arctic research. See Fort Churchill for the main article on this subject.
Industry
Churchill is a popular spot for ecotourism, as well as for Arctic research. Tourists can safely view polar bears from specially modified buses known as tundra buggies. October and early November are the most popular times to see the bears, which wait around the outskirts of the town until the ice freezes on Hudson Bay so that they can return to hunt their primary food source, seals. Churchill is also a reliable place to watch Beluga whales during the summer months.
The ice freezes first near Churchill because of the large volume of fresh water delivered by the nearby Churchill and Seal Rivers and because the predominant northeast wind causes ice to pile up along the shore just north of Churchill. For this reason, the port is iced in for much of the year but it is useful for shipping grain and other bulk cargos because shipping by rail costs several times as much, per ton, as shipping by sea. Another hindrance to Churchill becoming a main shipping port is due to the prominence of Canadian southern-bound trade with the United States. Due to these factors, the main industry of Churchill remains tourism, as described above.
Transportation
The town is the northern terminus of the Hudson Bay Railway, a useful link in the export of Canadian grain to European markets, with rail-sea connections made at Churchill. The port of Churchill is Canada's only real seaport on the Arctic Ocean[2]. There are no roads leading to the (outside world) rest of Canada and the United States.
Notes
- 1. ^ From the 2001 Census of Canada
- 2. ^ While Churchill is the only Arctic Ocean seaport in North America with a rail connection to the south, Hay River, NWT also provides a rail link to the Arctic Ocean. Hay River is a riverport. Cargo shipped north from Hay River travels by barge.
Further Reading
- MacEwan, Grant. The Battle for the Bay (Prairie Books, 1975). ISBN 0-919306-51-9
