Days 5 and 6 of the Grand Polar Bear Adventure

After enjoying a great breakfast at Gypsy’s (“the place to be in Churchill”), I checked out a couple of gift shops, all of which offer a wide selection of polar bear merchandise, mukluks and local crafts.
After answering an email or two, I then joined Pete, our Arctic species specialist, and Juliana, who organized this whole trip for our strategic partnership team, on a little excursion.  Our first stop was the grain dump, where spilled grain for the Port of Churchill is deposited.  This area is experiencing a new phenomenon this year – polar bears are coming in and eating the fermented grain.  We saw at least 10 bears in the area, and one came pretty close to our truck.  No one is quite sure what they’re doing there – bears generally don’t eat much but seals and other animals – but it’s certainly not a good sign.

A polar bear digging for fermented grain (C) WWF-Canada/ Riannon John
We then headed out to the Churchill Northern Studies Centre , where the executive director, Mike Goodyear, was kind enough to give us a tour of their incredible new facility.  The building itself is LEED Gold certified and very thoughtfully designed to host and support northern scientists.  It’s a pretty remarkable facility, and one that is very important to Arctic research.

The Churchill Northern Studies Centre looking pretty cool (C)WWF-Canada/ Riannon John
As Juliana pointed out in her Lessons from Churchill blog, there are lots of interesting things to learn about this town.  As a lifelong city-dweller, I’ve been particularly intrigued by the small town feel here (which is certainly to be expected in a place with less than 1,000 residents!).  For example, if you stay at Gypsy’s long enough, you’re sure to run in to just about everyone in town.  And at the Northern store, you can buy everything from grapes (for 9.89 a pound!) to jackets to furniture.  And if you’re short a dollar after a round of drinks at the Tundra Inn Restaurant, no one seems to mind.  It’s really charming and makes you feel like a part of the community.
Day 6 saw the arrival of our new visitors – a group from RSA, a global partner and the world’s largest marine insurance company.  This is a particularly exciting group because it includes RSA employees from Indian, Oman and the UK, as well as some of the Canadian team.  It’s quite the international contingent!  The visitors from warmer climates seem to be faring remarkably well so far, no doubt thanks to RSA’s thoughtful preparations (which included providing everyone with warm coats, snow pants, boots, scarves, hats, gloves and even classically Canadian Roots hoodies.)  They enjoyed a quick tour of the town, a stop at the Eskimo Museum, a bear lift and some time to explore and shop.

The RSA group at getting an intro at the Eskimo Museum in Churchill (C) WW-Canada/ Riannon John
These RSA employees are here as part of RSA’s Arctic Challenge, which ran over a seven and a half week period, during which RSA employees were asked to arrange themselves into teams of five to attempt to win their place on the trip to the Arctic. They had three routes to enter the competition: the step challenge, the fundraising and volunteering challenge and the bright green ideas challenge.  (You can learn more about the winners here.)
We’re thrilled to have the winning teams here with us in Churchill, especially since the WWF-RSA partnership is so focused on climate change, and we really believe there’s nothing to inspire action like seeing the impact it is having first hand – and nowhere is the impact of climate change more visible in than in the Arctic.  Stay tuned to find out what we see!