Monday, November 25, 2002
A visit to polar bears, in North Pole country
LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis
For those of us whose minds are on Santa Claus and North Pole, I bring the
next best thing - a holiday story of polar bears, in Santa's country. While
the good people of NYC were sweltering in a belated mid-November heat wave,
this family was up in Manitoba, Canada, in a little town by name of
Churchill, the polar bear capital of the world, looking for the creatures
and suffering near frostbite at -17C.
What chilled me more was the worrisome attitude of the Canadians, our old-
time allies. On Broadway in Winnipeg, our first stop in Canada, passing the
sportswear factory/store of Nygard Co., I saw a sign, "United we stand with
America." Yet a few blocks further, at the palatial Legislative Building of
Manitoba, there was a crowd with huge signs spelling out "No War." Not a
huge crowd, but nevertheless. Since a few days earlier my favorite Canadian
newspaper, The Globe and Mail, had reported a proposal to withdraw their
2,000 man Canadian peacekeeper contingent from Afghanistan, at the same time
that the impact of bin Laden's threatening letter was disclosed by Al
Jazeer, the trend became apparent. The Canadians have had an easygoing
attitude towards immigrants, to boost their huge country's population of
30M. Consequently, they have unwittingly harbored a number of notable
terrorists, 9/11 pilots and others, with a porous border to the US. Now they
are getting worried, and may want to get on the good side of the Muslims.
This, combined with Canadians' always suspicious attitude towards the US,
hurts the prospects for peace.
We flew to Winnipeg, the town of 700,000 that gave Winnie the Pooh his name,
via Minneapolis/St. Paul. It is the least touristy hub (to polar bears,Hudson's Bay whale watching, birds and flowers of the taiga and tundra) that
you can find - no tee shirts, no coffee mugs, no postcards, no strip joints
or "inappropriate word/phrase removed" bars. But there are two casinos, not easily found.
The tourist Winnipeg is a square bounded by boulevards named Kennedy,
Portage, Main and Broadway and their extensions. The last two cross at the
picturesque Forks, where Red and Assiniboine Rivers meet. It is the site of
Fort Garry that gave its name to our chateau-style landmarked hotel, built
by the Grand Trunk (a.k.a. Canadian Pacific) Railroad in 1911, with brass,
marble and statuary to knock your eyes out.
A little Manitobiana: the land was first seen by our "Half-Moon" sailor,
Henry Hudson in 1610, on his fourth voyage of looking for the northwest
passage to China. He was known to recover from his daring adventures; this
time he failed and "Discovery" spent a winter of misery, frozen in ice. In
the spring angry sailors set him adrift, to perish in the Texas-size bay
eventually named for him. They were not prosecuted, and some came back two
years later, with Thomas Button. A Dane, Jens Monks, in 1619, lost all but
two of his party to the cold (and to the eating of supposedly health-giving
polar bear livers, now known to be riddled with bacteria). The "heartland"
was eventually settled by two Frenchmen, Radisson and Chouart on the
"Nonsuch," a ship spnsored by the English Prince Rupert. Their success
prompted the founding of the legendary Hudson's Bay Company in 1670.
Meanwhile, French "voyageurs," fur traders for North West Company, rivals of
the HBC, settled the area and intermarried with the friendly Cree and
Assiniboine. Their progeny, the Metis, were the white majority, until waves
of hungry Scots arrived after 1812, following the Industrial Revolution and
the depredations of the sheep industry upon the tenant population of
Scotland.
The newcomers settled in the choice Forks, and the Metis fought them. The
representative of the Metis, Louis Riel, occupied Fort Garry and demanded a
provisional government for Manitoba. He failed and had to flee, but Manitoba
was eventually granted the status of a province. When Riel returned, he was
tried for treason and hanged. Today the decorated statue of this founder
stands in front of the Legislature Building, yet the history section of the
official Manitoba Museum never mentions his name.
From friendly Winnipeg we flew, aboard a 40-year old Hawker Siddeley
40-passenger turbo-jet, to icy Churchill. Calm Air has a one-page weekly
schedule, servicing the 400,000 Manitobans north of Winnipeg and the 26,000
Aboriginals/Indigenous people in the Canadian Arctic territory of Nunavut,
which encompasses 1/5 of the Federation's landmass. Churchill, with 671
inhabitants, also serves as the hospital center for the north, and the
mostly Inuit (Eskimo) people come here to give birth, with the certificate
reading "Churchill, Nunavut" (there are government benefits for Nunavut
people.) Aboriginals is the name of choice for Inuits, used to distinguish
themselves from the First Nations (Indians; the terms indigenous and natives
are also involved), whom they consider shiftless. Alcohol is the great enemy
that seduces both groups.
Nunavut Territory (est. 1999, capital Iqualuit with 3,600 inhabitants) has
26 communities, and 1/4 of the population are artists, creating stone art
(there's no wood above Arctic Circle), with the best pieces certified by a
Canadian Government label. The official languages are Innuktatut (two
dialects), English, French and, perhaps Denne, a native tongue. The
Innuktatut alphabet is syllabic, with an orthogtaphy of some 40 symbols and
more than one format, as offered for the PC. It was invented by a Bible
teacher around the end of the 19th Century, and has been adopted to the
point that young Inuits read and speak the ethnic languages and tend to
ignore English. So I'm told by a guide, lifetime friend of the indigenous
people, who also thinks that giving them unlimited use the salmon and
caribou ends in waste. He's seen native hunters kill a herd of 56 caribous,
for their tongues, a delicacy. Education, attitude training! Next week, the
lowdown on polar bears and their attitude training.
Wally Dobelis and the staff of T&V wish you a Merry Christmas, happy
Chanukkah, a glorious Kwanzaa and health, happiness and peace of mind in the
New Year.
For those of us whose minds are on Santa Claus and North Pole, I bring the
next best thing - a holiday story of polar bears, in Santa's country. While
the good people of NYC were sweltering in a belated mid-November heat wave,
this family was up in Manitoba, Canada, in a little town by name of
Churchill, the polar bear capital of the world, looking for the creatures
and suffering near frostbite at -17C.
What chilled me more was the worrisome attitude of the Canadians, our old-
time allies. On Broadway in Winnipeg, our first stop in Canada, passing the
sportswear factory/store of Nygard Co., I saw a sign, "United we stand with
America." Yet a few blocks further, at the palatial Legislative Building of
Manitoba, there was a crowd with huge signs spelling out "No War." Not a
huge crowd, but nevertheless. Since a few days earlier my favorite Canadian
newspaper, The Globe and Mail, had reported a proposal to withdraw their
2,000 man Canadian peacekeeper contingent from Afghanistan, at the same time
that the impact of bin Laden's threatening letter was disclosed by Al
Jazeer, the trend became apparent. The Canadians have had an easygoing
attitude towards immigrants, to boost their huge country's population of
30M. Consequently, they have unwittingly harbored a number of notable
terrorists, 9/11 pilots and others, with a porous border to the US. Now they
are getting worried, and may want to get on the good side of the Muslims.
This, combined with Canadians' always suspicious attitude towards the US,
hurts the prospects for peace.
We flew to Winnipeg, the town of 700,000 that gave Winnie the Pooh his name,
via Minneapolis/St. Paul. It is the least touristy hub (to polar bears,Hudson's Bay whale watching, birds and flowers of the taiga and tundra) that
you can find - no tee shirts, no coffee mugs, no postcards, no strip joints
or "inappropriate word/phrase removed" bars. But there are two casinos, not easily found.
The tourist Winnipeg is a square bounded by boulevards named Kennedy,
Portage, Main and Broadway and their extensions. The last two cross at the
picturesque Forks, where Red and Assiniboine Rivers meet. It is the site of
Fort Garry that gave its name to our chateau-style landmarked hotel, built
by the Grand Trunk (a.k.a. Canadian Pacific) Railroad in 1911, with brass,
marble and statuary to knock your eyes out.
A little Manitobiana: the land was first seen by our "Half-Moon" sailor,
Henry Hudson in 1610, on his fourth voyage of looking for the northwest
passage to China. He was known to recover from his daring adventures; this
time he failed and "Discovery" spent a winter of misery, frozen in ice. In
the spring angry sailors set him adrift, to perish in the Texas-size bay
eventually named for him. They were not prosecuted, and some came back two
years later, with Thomas Button. A Dane, Jens Monks, in 1619, lost all but
two of his party to the cold (and to the eating of supposedly health-giving
polar bear livers, now known to be riddled with bacteria). The "heartland"
was eventually settled by two Frenchmen, Radisson and Chouart on the
"Nonsuch," a ship spnsored by the English Prince Rupert. Their success
prompted the founding of the legendary Hudson's Bay Company in 1670.
Meanwhile, French "voyageurs," fur traders for North West Company, rivals of
the HBC, settled the area and intermarried with the friendly Cree and
Assiniboine. Their progeny, the Metis, were the white majority, until waves
of hungry Scots arrived after 1812, following the Industrial Revolution and
the depredations of the sheep industry upon the tenant population of
Scotland.
The newcomers settled in the choice Forks, and the Metis fought them. The
representative of the Metis, Louis Riel, occupied Fort Garry and demanded a
provisional government for Manitoba. He failed and had to flee, but Manitoba
was eventually granted the status of a province. When Riel returned, he was
tried for treason and hanged. Today the decorated statue of this founder
stands in front of the Legislature Building, yet the history section of the
official Manitoba Museum never mentions his name.
From friendly Winnipeg we flew, aboard a 40-year old Hawker Siddeley
40-passenger turbo-jet, to icy Churchill. Calm Air has a one-page weekly
schedule, servicing the 400,000 Manitobans north of Winnipeg and the 26,000
Aboriginals/Indigenous people in the Canadian Arctic territory of Nunavut,
which encompasses 1/5 of the Federation's landmass. Churchill, with 671
inhabitants, also serves as the hospital center for the north, and the
mostly Inuit (Eskimo) people come here to give birth, with the certificate
reading "Churchill, Nunavut" (there are government benefits for Nunavut
people.) Aboriginals is the name of choice for Inuits, used to distinguish
themselves from the First Nations (Indians; the terms indigenous and natives
are also involved), whom they consider shiftless. Alcohol is the great enemy
that seduces both groups.
Nunavut Territory (est. 1999, capital Iqualuit with 3,600 inhabitants) has
26 communities, and 1/4 of the population are artists, creating stone art
(there's no wood above Arctic Circle), with the best pieces certified by a
Canadian Government label. The official languages are Innuktatut (two
dialects), English, French and, perhaps Denne, a native tongue. The
Innuktatut alphabet is syllabic, with an orthogtaphy of some 40 symbols and
more than one format, as offered for the PC. It was invented by a Bible
teacher around the end of the 19th Century, and has been adopted to the
point that young Inuits read and speak the ethnic languages and tend to
ignore English. So I'm told by a guide, lifetime friend of the indigenous
people, who also thinks that giving them unlimited use the salmon and
caribou ends in waste. He's seen native hunters kill a herd of 56 caribous,
for their tongues, a delicacy. Education, attitude training! Next week, the
lowdown on polar bears and their attitude training.
Wally Dobelis and the staff of T&V wish you a Merry Christmas, happy
Chanukkah, a glorious Kwanzaa and health, happiness and peace of mind in the
New Year.
# posted by Wally Dobelis @ 1:14 AM 
