Sparring with Lauren Harris (or Churchill 2026)

 Who is a Churchillian? It is a bit of a puzzle to determine because for a long time no one has been born there. About 900 souls thrive in Churchill, but their moms flew to big city hospitals to give birth.  The town also has more people than those who live there year round. Hospitality workers come for the bear season or the aurora season.  There are park rangers and researchers. And a thousand tourists a year.  I want to give a shout out to our itinerant chef at the Churchill Northern Studies Centre. This one guy had to create and serve meals all on his own. The other chef was stuck in Cuba. Trump cut off oil to that country causing Air Canada to stop flights. If planes landed they wouldn’t have enough fuel to take off back home.  So here he was feeding two groups of visitors of 20 people or more each. And, as I pointed out in another blog post, the food was delicious. I was surprised though there was no decaf coffee since our group and the first one we overla...

 What do the words “research station” conjure? Perhaps cheap, grooved wall-panelling? Perhaps a cafeteria table surrounded by a few 40-something year-old men with grizzly beards wearing lumber jack shirts and eating spam? When I knew I was going to be at a research station in Churchill, Manitoba I looked forward to this and to a built-in desk under a window in a bedroom appropriate for a monk. I think it might be best to describe the Churchill Northern Studies Centre building by starting at its front door on a cold February afternoon. Its welcome matt is a grating under foot to scrap off snow. Surely that’s not remarkable, except that there is nothing under the grating for several feet.  Human fertiliser also drops down the composting toilets’ waste pipe to the basement level. But I’m getting ahead of myself. (Oops -- was that a pun?) Churchill Northern Studies Centre's Welcome Mat Stepping through the set of double entrance doors one becomes enveloped in the sweet light float...

There is a tale that weaves together Canadian identity with the lands around the Artic, the realms of the magnetic and haunting North. The months of winter along the 49th parallel cast this story into a tangible weft in the fabric of our being. I believed this whole-heartedly and finally, this February 2026, I experienced 58.7679° N in 3D and with all five senses and then some. "Wait," you say. "Churchill, Manitoba lays south of the Artic circle. Can it count as 'North'?"  How can a place that has a polar bear 'jail' not count as 'North', say I.  Polar Bear Holding Facility where naturally-fasting bears learn they won't get food if they troll this town.  Released when ice forms on the bay, they are rewarded with a dinner of seals. Not bad, given the alternative to threatening humans is death.  And the land is dotted with spruce 'flag trees', blasted by the rant of the Northwest wind so relentlessly that the branches on the side f...

February 13th. A Friday. Where does a trip start?  Does it start precisely at the end of the previous trip? Did this current pilgrimage to the North start at the wrap up of a trip that ended just two days ago? Or did it start after the two rotations of the Earth that left just enough time to air dry a freshly laundered bra and fold it away into a rolling suitcase taller than a husky?  Or did this trip to Churchill start much earlier? Did it start when overseas visitors and adventurous Winnipeggers insisted I go to the place that they just returned from exploring? I worry that this trek to Canada’s only northern port started with my susceptibility to Manitoba’s “Spirited Energy” marketing campaign.  But I suspect that going to Churchill, Manitoba started even further back, before I moved to Winnipeg.  It must have started with my father's love of  the paintings of Lauren Harris, which enticed us to stare and stare and stare at representations the geometric, minim...