by CHURCHILL, Manitoba (AP) – Change has broken, rebuilt and continues to reshape this remote town where tundra meets forest on the shores of Hudson Bay.
The economic base collapsed when the army left the town. Rail service and cargo ships — the blood of supplies for towns not connected to the rest of the world by road — disappeared. The weather is warming, animal signatures are decreasing and even the land is shifting.
Through it all, Churchill has adapted. The town turned to tourism, attracting people eager to see the polar bears. Leaders found ways to revive their port and railway. As climate change has moved into the picture, they have begun to design more flexible buildings and try to attract more diverse visitors if, as scientists fear, sea ice declines on the bear population.
Residents, government officials and experts say the town is a model for dealing with dramatic changes and attribute it to a rural mindset that focuses on settlement, not gentrification.
Churchill is located approximately 1,700 kilometers (1,055 miles) north of Winnipeg. The town was home to thousands of people before the military base and rocket research launch site closed decades ago. Those locations declined, and a bustling port was closed. Train service stopped for more than a year as the weather broke poorly maintained tracks.
As the town dwindled, bears started coming to town more often, they were no longer scared by tire noise and rocket launches and became desperate as climate change left the ice in Hudson Bay which they rely on as a hunting base.
A local mechanic built a grease-tired recreational vehicle to safely spot bears. Photos and documentaries have attracted tourists, who spend an average of $5,000 per visit and millions of dollars in total. Churchill is now the polar bear capital of the world, and while it has no stoplights, it does have high-end restaurants and lots of mom-and-pop hotels.
If that ends, Churchill hopes to be ready.
The town is promoting tourism for beluga whales, although they too can be harmed as the entire Hudson Bay ecosystem, including the food the belugas eat, shifts to a more attractive one. usually further south. It is also emphasizing the expectations of the visitors to see the northern lights, to see birds that they cannot see at home, and even to try the dog.
“Over time you’re going to lose bear season. And we know that. Anyway, it’s just a matter of getting used to that change,” said Mike Spence, mayor since 1995. “You can’t stand it. That won’t get you points.”
Spence grew up with the military installation “and all of a sudden it closes and then all of a sudden you get the tourists, the abundance of wildlife and the aurora. That’s where you benefit. You make a difference and you make life better.”
The port closed and the train tracks damaged? The town gave them over and the two got on the run again. Is the ground sinking because the weather is getting rainier and the permafrost is melting? New buildings like those at Polar Bears International, a nonprofit conservation organization headquartered in the city, have metal jackets that can be adjusted when a corner goes nearly half a foot in five years.
Lauren Sorkin, executive director of the Resilient Cities Network, said every city should have a plan to adapt to the effect of climate change on the economy and tourism.
“Churchill is an excellent example of a city that is planning ahead to protect communities and preserve our natural environment and its biodiversity,” she said.
Spence, who is Cree, grew up without electricity or running water in the “apartments” on the outskirts of town, which were run by a white minority. Churchill is about two-thirds indigenous with Cree, Metis, Inuit and Dene. Spence recalls his father saying that if he spoke better English, he could tell officials how to fix the town.
“I think I’m doing that for him,” Spence said. “You don’t just say ‘I have a problem.’ You go there with the fix.”
You can’t drive to Churchill. Food, people, cargo, everything goes there by rail, boat or plane. Rail is the cheapest, and most residents travel by overnight train to Thompson, then drive south.
Until a few years ago the train tracks, which were leased to a private company, were not properly maintained and the wet and stormy spring of 2017 created 22 washouts of the line between Churchill and points south, Spence said. The company could not afford to repair them.
Big storms in Churchill are as much as 30% rainier than 80 years ago because of human-caused climate change, said Cornell University climate scientist Angie Pendergrass.
“The service stopped dead” for 18 months, Spence said. “It was just devastating.”
Meanwhile, not enough goods were coming into the aging port. Spence said a shipping hub and rail lines needed to operate as an integrated system, and not be run by an absentee US owner, so the town negotiated with the federal and provincial governments for local control and financial assistance. federal.
In 2018, the Arctic Gateway Group, a partnership of 41 First Nations and northern communities, took over the port and railway. Rail service returned on Halloween that year. Manitoba officials said 610 kilometers of track have been upgraded in the past two years and 10 bridges have been repaired. The port has more than tripled shipping from 2021, including the return of its first cruise ship in a decade, they said.
Earlier this year, officials announced another $60 million in port and rail funding.
Local ownership is key in Churchill, said former Chamber of Commerce president Dave Daley, who left the town in the 1980s but returned after five years because he and his wife missed it. The big hotel chains once went around and said they could fix the town’s infrastructure and build something big.
“We all stood up and said ‘no’,” Daley said. “We are a tight group. We have our different opinions and everything else but we know how we want Churchill to be.”
As Churchill changes, its forgotten history has sometimes surfaced as tourists ask about residents and their history, said longtime resident Georgina Berg, who like Spence lived in the apartments as a child. The past includes “not so happy stories” of forced relocation, missing women, poverty, subsistence hunting, ignored deaths and abuse, said Berg, a Cree.
Daley, a dog racer and president of Manitoba Native Tourism, tells how the Metis people were particularly ignored, abused and punished, but ends the history lesson with an abrupt twist.
“We can’t change five minutes ago, but we can change five minutes from now,” Daley said. “So that’s what I teach my kids. You know it’s nice to know the history and all the horrors and everything that happened, but if we’re going to get better from that we have to look forward and look five minutes from now and what can we do to change that.”
Meanwhile, Daley and Spence notice the changes in the weather – not only warmer, but they’re getting thunder here, something once unimaginable. The Arctic is warming four times faster than the rest of the world. Although Churchill isn’t as bad off because it’s south of the Arctic Circle, “we’re serious about it,” Spence said.
“It’s a question of finding the right blend in how you adapt to climate change,” Spence said. “And work with it.”
___
Read more about AP’s climate coverage at http://www.apnews.com/climate-and-environment
___
Follow Seth Borenstein on X at @borenbears
______
The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage is financially supported by multiple private foundations. AP is responsible for each and every subject. Find AP standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and covered areas of funding at AP.org.
