Polar Bear Blog - September 17, 2006

The greenhouse is dead. With increasingly cool temperatures, we figured it was time to put the old redneck greenhouse to rest. Of course, when it was halfway disassembled the sun came out and it feels like it is 20C out there now.

The final harvest was pretty good, lots of potatoes, carrots, some dill, nasturtium and onions. We moved quite a few plants back into the house and are keeping the cucumbers and tomatoes going. I think I have figured out my final plans for a floating, hydroponic greenhouse on our lake next year...

I am going to stop posting on this site, partly because I have created a blog on www.polarbearalley.com and partly because this site is really slow to post things on! So bookmark and stay tuned to www.polarbearalley.com for daily not-really-news from Churchill.

Polar Bear Blog - Polar Bears Doing Okay, Somewhere - September 6th, 2006

Ask and ye shall receive. A few days ago, I went on a rant about the fact that nothing but bad news is being published about polar bears and all this bad news was kind of degrading for these big white beasts.

Today is a bit gloomy so I was catching up on computer work this morning, enjoying my coffee and CBC Radio. Their morning show, The Current, featured a documentary about climate change in Nunavut. One of their subjects was polar bear biologist Mitch Taylor who is currently working on year two of a three year mark-recapture study of polar bears in Davis Strait.

During his interview, conducted during his current field research on Baffin Island, he stated that the Davis Strait polar bear population is doing quite well. And despite the best efforts of the interviewer, he managed to stay away from any reference to climate change, simply saying that it is probably a result of the decline in harp seal hunting on the east coast of Canada (another equally controversial topic). Without hunting to curb their population, harp seals are now being found in more numbers and in places where they previously did not frequent.

Wow, a polar bear population doing quite well, that's awesome! In fact, his view, which is not often heard, is that polar bears in Nunavut are generally doing okay and not in drastic decline as the media often reports. And, in fact, scientific evidence seems to support this view.

Of course, we have to be careful here, scientific research in general shows that much of the arctic is warming (more so in the western Canadian arctic and Alaska than the eastern arctic) and that if these trends continue unabated much of the ice platforms in the Canadian arctic will be substantially altered or even disappear. It would be an understatement to say that this would be bad for polar bears.

And this, of course, does not mean that the Beaufort Sea or Western Hudson Bay populations are not declining but it does mean that many of the generalizations heard about polar bears in the media tend towards the alarmist side of things.

But, why does it matter? Why is our current approach to climate change dangerous? Because we have reached the point where if you do not support a doomsday ethos regarding climate change then you become lost in the shuffle. And this shuffle is becoming so big that the real threats, such as consistent lack of corporate responsibility and loss of habitat, are being lost within the shuffle as well.

Related article from CBC interview with Dr. Mitch Taylor

Polar Bear Blog - Incredible Shrinking Polar Bears - August 30, 2006

I am not sure why but I really get irked when I read news articles about the latest scientific disaster to hit polar bears. There are always announcements that the ice cap is melting, they have less time to hunt seals, they are drowning, they are being over-hunted, they are turning to cannibalism, they are turning into hermaphrodites. And now their genitals are getting smaller. Great.

I really respect polar bears, they scare the living daylights out of me and really decrease the amount of REM sleep I get around this time of year but I still respect them. Every new study and new article just feels like a friend has been kicked while he is down.

I mean, give the bears a break - not from pollution or climate change (we should have done that twenty years ago...ten years ago...March 2nd...) - but from pity. Will somebody please write a story about polar bears doing something majestic instead of simply more demeaning science?

We talk about how we created climate change and climate change is killing polar bears and how we have to save them - but that does not translate politically, we will save them as long as it does not really inconvenience our day-to-day life. It does seems a little twisted.

But, in the big picture, what are we saving? Polar bears emerged as their own species about 200,000 years ago. That is a long time in terms of weather patterns, ice ages and individual lifespans but a very short time in terms of evolution. Maybe the polar bear's time has simply come and it will die off or slowly return to a more grizzly lifestyle. Or maybe the grolar or pizzly is not an alarming death knell but the beginning of an amazing jump in evolution.

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Polar Bear Blog - Is it Bear Season Yet? - August 23, 2006

Another polar bear visitor came back this morning, around 5:00am this time. You know there have been a lot of bear encounters when you wake up to your dogs barking and howling, your girlfriend grabbing the shotgun, running out the door saying, 'Are there cracker shells or slugs in the gun?' and your equally sluggish response is 'Umm... slugs.' and then you just drift back to sleep amidst the howling, honking, barking and blasting.

But, it is 6am now and I am up and enjoying the sunrise and some very very good coffee (Kicking Horse Organic Coffee Co.). Thinking about how all things polar bear have changed this summer. A few reasons for this:

- Changes with Churchill's garbage - Many polar bears are just not too sure where to go now that it is gone. I would say that 8-10 polar bears pretty much lived and hid in the willows behind the dump up until its closure last year. Yesterday, we watched one bear just sitting on a gravel ridge where the garbage dump used to be, kind of willing it to come back.

Conversely, there has been garbage sitting at Churchill's new recycling/waste transfer station for almost ten months now and it is pretty stinky. While town employees are continuing to one-up the polar bears, it is a challenge. When polar bears broke the garage bay doors, the town put up iron, barred gates to keep them out. Of course, some bears crawled under the gates. Once the town fixed that, the bears simply started chewing and clawing their way through the walls and ceiling instead. After that, the town flattened some scrap metal and bolted it to the exterior walls. The bears are now thinking about their next plan of action...

- Changes in the Polar Bear Alert program - With the closure of the dump and opening of the Recycling Centre closer to town, the Polar Bear Alert has centred its activities around the community. Some of the old trap and polar bear snare areas, including polar bear alley and the old dump site, are no longer used. Now, provided a polar bear does not venture within five miles of town, he probably will not be relocated or captured.

- Changes in the climate - Break-up of Hudson Bay was fairly early this year, meaning more time for polar bears to arrive and hang out in Churchill. This is not as much of a problem as a late freeze since more and more bears gather along the Cape and then head to town after tourism season shuts down in mid-November. This is pretty rare, however, as the date of freeze-up is pretty reliable, usually occurring November 15th or so. Of course, with the first hints of frost in the air this morning, it might be a little early this year...hard to say.

Originally written for www.polarbearalley.com this morning... since then I have had a nap and some watermelon.

Polar Bear Blog - Is it Bear Season Yet? - August 23, 2006

Another polar bear visitor came back this morning, around 5:00am this time. You know there have been a lot of bear encounters when you wake up to your dogs barking and howling, your girlfriend grabbing the shotgun, running out the door saying, 'Are there cracker shells or slugs in the gun?' and your equally sluggish response is 'Umm... slugs.' and then you just drift back to sleep amidst the howling, honking, barking and blasting.

But, it is 6am now and I am up and enjoying the sunrise and some very very good coffee (Kicking Horse Organic Coffee Co.). Thinking about how all things polar bear have changed this summer. A few reasons for this:

- Changes with Churchill's garbage - Many polar bears are just not too sure where to go now that it is gone. I would say that 8-10 polar bears pretty much lived and hid in the willows behind the dump up until its closure last year. Yesterday, we watched one bear just sitting on a gravel ridge where the garbage dump used to be, kind of willing it to come back.

Conversely, there has been garbage sitting at Churchill's new recycling/waste transfer station for almost ten months now and it is pretty stinky. While town employees are continuing to one-up the polar bears, it is a challenge. When polar bears broke the garage bay doors, the town put up iron, barred gates to keep them out. Of course, some bears crawled under the gates. Once the town fixed that, the bears simply started chewing and clawing their way through the walls and ceiling instead. After that, the town flattened some scrap metal and bolted it to the exterior walls. The bears are now thinking about their next plan of action...

- Changes in the Polar Bear Alert program - With the closure of the dump and opening of the Recycling Centre closer to town, the Polar Bear Alert has centred its activities around the community. Some of the old trap and polar bear snare areas, including polar bear alley and the old dump site, are no longer used. Now, provided a polar bear does not venture within five miles of town, he probably will not be relocated or captured.

- Changes in the climate - Break-up of Hudson Bay was fairly early this year, meaning more time for polar bears to arrive and hang out in Churchill. This is not as much of a problem as a late freeze since more and more bears gather along the Cape and then head to town after tourism season shuts down in mid-November. This is pretty rare, however, as the date of freeze-up is pretty reliable, usually occurring November 15th or so. Of course, with the first hints of frost in the air this morning, it might be a little early this year...hard to say.

Polar Bear Blog - My Brief and Tumultuous Career as a Travel Writer - August 21, 2006

So, I just finished a ten-day argument with editors at UpHere Magazine about my 'Confessions of a Buggy Driver' article. You see, I have a slight problem with authority and especially authority that changes my creative ejaculations. I take it personally.

Things were going quite well until I received the latest rewrite and then replied by email that I was going to fly to Yellowknife and punch one of their employees in the face if the article ran unchanged. Usually, I am quite a reasonable guy but there is something about someone rewriting or redrawing or remixing something you created that is akin to putting the moves on your girlfriend while you are in the same room (they have not slept with her but you still feel violated and enraged at the same time and kind of have to do something about it).

But, I suppose that despite my prima donna fantasies, this happens to all writers and it is merely a part of the game and it will end up fine in the end with no one noticing other than me.

Mmmm... self-publishing...

Polar Bear Blog - Men and Women - August 20, 2006

Well, I was going to write about the polar bear that came by at 4:04am this morning and firing cracker shells and running around in my skivvies chasing him but there are greater issues at play these days. And of course what could be greater than male/female relationships - the blessing and scourge of the planet all at the same time.

Where did this all come from? Well, first of all, men and women should never ever try to work together. We are different. Our friends, Chad and Nancy, are up here right now and it is a blast. It is also great to meet someone else who is just as much of a disaster as we are and realize that 99% of everyone are disasters as well.

Me and Chad finished the veranda today and it looks awesome. Standing on the second level is vundah-bah-hah-hah-hah (as my ancestors in the Wunderbar commercials would say). Any elevation in the arctic is spectacular, a view of one lake becomes a view of fifteen, eight feet up.
Anyway, things went incredibly well with Chad and myself; men communicate well together and work well together - one becomes the boss but is willing to listen to the other's opinion. In a nutshell, veranda was completed along with a couple glasses of whiskey in about an hour or two. The women were out berry picking, it was all very primal.

However, we had to relocate the satellite internet receiver after completing the veranda. We did that after the women returned and made the mistake of asking for help. Not saying that women are not capable and wonderful people, but we have very different ways of working. Women are verbal and men are physical. That means, while we are doing things, women are talking about the way we should be doing them even if we are doing them that way already that aggrevates men and then women get upset that we are not validating their opinions and then men respond by drinking more and eating charred meat.

So, we ended up having a forty minute debate (and it was extremely civil now that I think of it) of the differences between men and women. All I can say, is that Discovery Channel reality TV should just set up here, they would be entertained.

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Polar Bear Blog - Top Predator - August 17, 2006

This is the summer of bear! I love it! They are all over the place.

We have a couple friends up from Winnipeg for the weekend and after an awesome supper of whitefish and wildrice, we headed out for a walk to the Ithaca, our local shipwreck.

The Ithaca ran aground in September 1960 and has been rusting away ever since. Actually, it was probably rusting away for a time before it ran aground but that is another story.

So, you can walk out to the Ithaca at low-tide, a nice little stroll on the tidal flats. However, I highly recommend carrying a gun as polar bear often sleep in the hull on sunny days or wander along the edge of the water.

Last night, we had just returned from our walk, taking one last look at the Ithaca before jumping into the truck. Just in time for the sun to dip out of the clouds and highlight a lone polar bear heading towards the shipwreck. The incredible thing was that he was sniffing the ground and following our tracks almost to a tee, even places where we doubled back to avoid tidal streams, he doubled back in the hopes of a quick meal.

We watched him meander all the way to the ship and then pace back and forth trying to figure out where our scent or where his prey ended up. We would have waited until he found our trail back to the truck but tea and ginger snaps and the woodstove were waiting back at Camp Nanuq.

I have seen this before, as soon as the sun gets low enough in the sky and the first chill of dusk sets in, polar bears begin to stir and go for an evening stroll or hopefully an evening hunt. Even if the wind is too strong for them to catch your scent or even if they cannot actually see where you are, they are still capable of finding your trail on the ground. Once they do, their 'Terminator'-like determination sets in and they will follow it to the bitter end.

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