#Churchill polar bears

[travelernight]

Ultimate Canada Journey: 10 Stops You Need to Make

[pangeen]

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“ Nap Attack “ // © Martin Gregus 

Music:  Kristian Sonderlund - World of Water

[kaelula-sungwis]

🇨🇦🐻‍❄️🐻‍❄️🐻‍❄️ by Dave Wong Via Flickr: Family portrait of twin polar bear cubs with mom :)

[littlepawz]

Polar bear under the Northern Lights

[sitting-on-me-bum]

Polar bears behind ice, Churchill, Manitoba, Canada

Grant Faint/The Image Bank/Getty Images

[notbornwithit]

Churchill, MB August 2022

[rogue-coyote]

guess whose going to the arctic this fall :-) MEEEEE

really excited to see Churchill for the first time, do some cool research, and mentor some young Indigenous scientists <3

[ilikeit-art]

“Sweet Dreams”

Martin Gregus captured a once in a lifetime moment of a Polar Bear sleeping on a bed of fireweed.

Churchill, Manitoba, Canada

[quotesfrommyreading]

Churchill is a town utterly of the north. Its gridded blocks of aluminum-sided houses sit between miles of cratered tundra and the icy mouth of the Churchill River. This cold flank of Hudson Bay was once a meeting place for Inuit hunters and the Cree and Dene First Nations. Today, about three-quarters of Churchill’s almost 900 residents identify as indigenous. The town boasts one of the only movie theaters within a thousand miles, as well as access to Canada’s only deep-water port in the Arctic.

As the climate warms, more bears wander into Churchill to scavenge—or moon around in backyards, or chew the seat off a snowmobile. Mayor Michael Spence, a member of the Cree First Nation, says bear sightings were a novelty when he was a boy in the early 1960s—he remembers playing in a game of road hockey that was interrupted by a mother and two cubs—but today they are more common.

On Halloween 2013, a 30-year-old woman named Erin Greene, who had moved to Churchill from Montreal the previous year, was leaving a party with friends when she looked over her shoulder. “There’s this bear that’s already full-speed running at us,” Greene says. While her friends ran for help, the bear began carrying her off. “I realized that this was a fight I couldn’t win on my own and just accepted that this is the way I was going to die,” she says.

Just in time, a neighbor appeared, striking the bear’s head with a shovel. The bear dropped her and she was airlifted to the hospital to treat her life-threatening injuries. Despite the terrifying ordeal Greene suffered, and the scars and occasional pains she still bears, she returned to Churchill. The reason, she says, is a quality particular to the north. “The cold burns your face, the sky is beautiful, the animals could be around every corner. It’s so real, it’s so raw,” she says. She feels a different connection to polar bears now—“a different understanding.” Her medical bills added up to thousands of dollars, but the local community paid them all.

  —  Polar Bears Live on the Edge of the Climate Change Crisis

[legalizegoblins]

Brown bear season may be winding down, but the brief but glorious polar bear convergence at Churchill, Manitoba has begun, so it's time for the polar bear cams!

[sparklehoard]

9, 13, 22? For the get to know you asks ^^

9! What's your all time favorite movie/TV show?

That's a toughie. My childhood favorite was Lilo and Stitch and I love that movie to this day. I even have a concept art book because I loved the watercolor backgrounds for that movie so much 💛 as an adult I think ghibli movies are a favorite but How to be Single and Amelie are my favorites as well.

13. Dream place to visit?

Aaaah everywhere!! But I'd love to take advantage of the fact since I've got Irish lineage I'd get a free year long visa to go to Ireland. I'd also love to go to Japan! Visit the fancy hot springs. Visit the animal Islands like the fox and deer ones. But frankly take me anywhere that's warm!!! I want to go!!!

22. Best memory you can think of?

First one that popped into my head was my trip to iceland!! Because I was on the topic of trips!

My family and my home town is terribly conservative so I couldn't experience a lot of LGBT culture growing up. But my mother wanted to run the Reykjavic marathon. It's a 10k through the city and she signed all 6 of us up.

We ran and we got separated to the point where we didn't see eachother the whole race. But as I ran I saw houses with rainbow flags. Same sex couples with kids waving to all the runners from their from porches. It made me so happy. The route was by a lot of houses. People were having parties to watch the runners. People were playing instruments from their front steps as we ran by (there was an 80 year old guy just KILLING it on the trumpet 🔥) but I saw so many rainbow flags and happy families out in the open it was one of the best experiences I can remember. 🏳️‍🌈 I had a good run I finished strong!!!

[northern-manitoba]

I was bored and I love making sonas okay.

Hello, I'm Northern Manitoba. ✨️

My pronouns are he/him or they/them.

You can call me North or Churchill. I'm an adult. I'm Indigenous. I'm Red River Métis. Yes, I really live here.

I felt like the gimmick Canadian blogs needed some Indigenous flair. 🧡 and who better to serve than Manitoba, who has the highest population.

My blogsona looks like:

(I'm a polar bear)

🧡🧡🧡🧡🧡🧡🧡

Typical rules and conditions apply: Basically, don't be rude! No bigotry will be tolerated. This blog is ONLY SFW.

@definitelymanitoba we're cousins now !!

[jakey-beefed-it]

During our midnight walk last night in (vain) hopes of seeing the aurora, my spouse and I discussed taking a special trip at some point to a far enough northern locale that it would be all but guaranteed. She mentioned Churchill, which is apparently "only" a nine hour flight away, and has the added benefit of being able to spot polar bears.

I have a healthy respect for bears, generally, that transitions to "appropriate fear" as one escalates from black bears to brown bears and thence to polar bears, so I confess feeling a bit torn on the possibility of seeing a polar bear in person outside of a zoo setting.

On the one hand, it would be seriously cool to see a wild polar bear (especially as such a thing might prove impossible in the all-too-near future). On the other, plenty of dumber, whiter people than I have learned firsthand that polar bears are not to be fucked with. "Man proposes, God disposes" and all that.

On the OTHER other hand, though, everybody dies somehow and it would be an objectively funny end for a Californian to be eaten by a polar bear.

[beaft]

Having lived near Churchill, Manitoba, I would rather a whole militia of dudes with rifles looking specifically for me over one singular polar bear looking for food. Those dudes and I probably have most of the same limitations, but a mildly curious polar bear? Absolutely not. Unstoppable force. If we’re talking a black bear or something then yeah sure give me the bear, but polar bears are like toddlers that weigh 1000 pounds.

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[sitting-on-me-bum]

A polar bear almost seems to heave a sigh as it waits outside Churchill, Man., for sea ice to form on Hudson Bay.

Photographer: Dave Sandford

Canadian Geographic’s Canadian Photos of the Year competition