LIFE IN NORTHERN CANADA - A look at Churchill, MB

this is part three of my trip to churchill canada with my dad and my goal is to show you what it's really like to visit this small remote and beautiful town and it started with our arrival the train stopped at what is now designated a national heritage railway station and is now run by parks canada with an interpretive center inside which houses a very realistic recreation of a polar bear den where a mother would have her cubs our first stop was for a cup of coffee at the only espresso bar in town at the lazy bear cafe it's a very cute log cabin style lodge with a cozy restaurant and cafe inside where we ran into the only people we knew in town oh well well galia scott you can't escape me and they decorated the top of my dad's drink with a moose and mine with a bear paw all right good stop we're caffeinated now we're gonna go see what we can see now before we continue around churchill this is future editing mike here wanting to let you know that today's video is sponsored by skillshare and if you don't know what skillshare is it's an online learning platform with thousands of courses for curious and creative minds like ourselves and before going on this trip i wanted to make the most of it so i took constant punka's course on wildlife photography capturing portraits of your favorite animals which in this case is polar bears i really wanted to up my game before i went so that i was able to take these the courses are short fun interesting and skillshare is just a great place to learn from other people that are already doing what you want to be doing and the best part is with an annual membership it's under 10 a month and right now the first 1000 people to click the link in the description down below we'll get a free skillshare premium membership so you can try it out learn some new skills and i want to say thank you to skillshare for sponsoring today's video now let's get back to church there are no luxury hotels or chains of any kind every business in town is a local [Music] [Applause] business room tour oh it's warm in here it's perfect everything we need nothing more nothing less now it's on to our tour and our first stop is cape mary so if you watched my banff jasper video you know i talked about the red chairs apparently these are the most northern parks canada red chairs so i don't know i guess it feels special comfortable yeah they're just like they're just like the other red chairs but different national park this is actually a national historic site nailed it so this is the famous hudson's bay a very important body of water and at the moment it's in the process of freezing this is salt water yeah this is salt water this is a bay it's ocean and it's freezing that's how cold it is right now the whole reason we're in churchill and why it has become such a tourist destination is because the ice freezes here first in all of the hudson bay which means the polar bears congregate here so they can go out onto the ice as early as possible the reason this corner of the hudson bay freezes first is due to the counter-clockwise current of the bay bringing the cold water and the ice down here but also churchill has three freshwater rivers that flow into the bay right here making it easier to freeze and because the bay freezes here first means the polar bears swarm here in the fall to get back out onto the ice as soon as possible look at this beach normally it's a rocky beach and it is covered in ice at the moment all being shipped in shipped in from the hudson's bay look at this like a light covering of snow on top of all this ice so taylor does uh part of this tour involve a polar bear swim uh it's optional so the landscape up here is the canadian shield it's those big slabs of rock where very little vegetation on top that's all this and that is the grain elevators that is the port to export the grain from saskatchewan and manitoba that's why the railway was built to churchill which is what we took to get here yesterday how about that fresh air what is it oh it's fresh there's no pollution here none it's just oh it's just it's brisk it's just a little brisk it's cold enough you feel it in your lungs as it goes down but it's not burning it's not that cold so because there's no road in and out of town to churchill most of the vehicles in town have a license plate that starts with ra for remote area which gives you cheaper insurance because there's you can't drive on any highway or into any city just these roads the longest road in churchill is 24 kilometers that goes to the airport this is it this is downtown churchill it's uh the middle of the main road of less than a thousand people where is everybody they're supposed to be you know kids playing in the street playing hockey nobody but there are a lot of atvs and any of the vehicles you see here those vans trucks whatnot they've all been shipped here by train because there's no highway or road into churchill but if it's not too cold the whole town is definitely walkable it's a very small small footprint most of the roads are gravel to withstand the freezing thawing of permafrost and reduce cracks and potholes now let's take a look at the grocery store known as the northern as we walk inside towards the produce section we can see that we have a chance to win an atv it's your one-stop shop in churchill now i'd heard rumors that grocery items in the north are much more expensive than in the city but i found prices to be pretty close to normal this store has everything you need from food to appliances to liquor and clothing and more wait inside that green little building also the churchill northern study center grows leafy green vegetables in this container right here it's a scientific project to help improve food security in northern communities which i think is very cool next we couldn't talk about churchill without mentioning the atsan attack museum it's by donation and started as a private collection that quickly grew and was eventually made public and is an incredible collection of inuit and first nations art with some pieces being over 300 years old so the inuit used to carve the tusks from a walrus to make their art and it looked like this look how impressive that is the detail on some of these is remarkable and finally i was most impressed by the incredible mural art all around town decorating some of their most boring and gray buildings it really is the little touches that make this place feel special now since we took the train into town this is actually my first time seeing the airport and apparently some guests are even greeted by a polar bear immediately as they arrive so we're at the churchill airport there's only one airline that operates out of here and it's calm air so i feel very relaxed while it is just a small domestic airport it has one of the largest runways in canada big enough to land a space shuttle and is one of the few northern airports designated as a diversion airport for commercial jets that require an emergency landing now just prepare for delays as while the airport is well prepared extreme winter weather has been known to delay flights by a day or so luckily for us we're out on time now as we take off you can look down and see just how much ice has formed offshore in just three days the polar bears will all be out of town by tomorrow [Music] well we've made it to winnipeg now we have to grab my dad's luggage i travel only carry on gotta grab my dad's luggage head upstairs and try and find the check-in so we can catch our next flight to calgary and then to vancouver finally we have a really tight window to catch that next flight now of course the winnipeg airport was completely empty on our way through look how few departure flights there are it's three one of them is delayed and after a trip like we just had i'm finally exhausted [Music] and now we're back home in vancouver and actually i just want to remind you that this trip was filmed back in october it just took me a while to get through the footage but the travel bans and travel restrictions have since changed so if you're planning a trip yourself just make sure to look into the local provincial or state restrictions and respect the locals and we can all get along anyway if you're new to the channel you can subscribe by clicking on my face right here and i don't know where i'm going next maybe nowhere for a while in fact so i'll probably be here in vancouver either way i know i want you here with me until next week see ya you

Channel: DownieLive

Views: 351,286

Rating: 4.9069648 out of 5

Keywords: downielive, churchill, churchill manitoba, manitoba, manitoba canada, canada, canada city tour, northern canada, northern canada survival, northern canada road trip, polar bear, polar bears, churchill polar bears, churchill polar bear tours, churchill vlog, manitoba vlog, canada vlog, town tour, city tour

Id: Z9tsW4VKuJ4

Length: 9min 25sec (565 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 12 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/DerisionConsulting]

This guy went to the remote communities during covid, for youtube videos. We should not be giving him views, what he did was irresponsible.