The Polar Bear Jail of Churchill

Living in Churchill in northern Manitoba, Canada, has its perils. Situated on the banks of Hudson Bay, approximately 1,000 km north of the provincial capital, Winnipeg, Churchill is one of Canada’s most remote towns. Few places are inhabited so far north, with the exception of a couple of Inuit communities and research stations. But cold and isolation are not the only challenges its residents face. Their biggest threat is polar bears. A polar bear warning sign in Churchill, Manitoba. Photo: sirtravelalot/Shutterstock.com Churchill stands on the migration route of these large predators, who travel along the coastline to their hunting ground in Hudson Bay, where they look for seals in the ice. Although the hunting season lasts only through fall when the sea ice has just started to form after months of summer melt, polar bears skirt the town’s borders throughout the year. More often than not, one would wander into the streets and frighten the living daylights out of the residents. “It’s unnerving, walking around,” a Churchill resident told The Atlantic . “You walk out in the morning, and from the tracks in fresh snow, you see that a bear has walked between the houses.” Churchill grew from a small remote outpost to a thriving commercial port engaging in fur trade to a strategic US military base all in the span of four hundred years. After World War 2, Churchill became part of the Canadian signals intelligence network, and later the site for rocket research for atmospheric studies. Churchill was nearly annihilated when the British government decided to test nuclear weapons there, but then chose Australia instead. Today, Churchill is mostly a polar bears’ town, with nearly 800 of them living in the vicinity. That number swells to 10,000 during the hunting season. That’s the best time to watch polar bears.