Melting ice forces polar bears onto mainland Canada every year, where they can sometimes be viewed at very close quarters, as an awestruck Jolyon Attwooll finds out.
There was, perhaps, the length of a football pitch between me and the world’s largest terrestrial carnivore. Just in front of me the imposing shape of our guide, “Butch” Saunders paused sharply, one hand clasping the Winchester 303 rifle slung over his shoulder. Ahead, one ton of polar bear was rising onto its haunches.
Instinctively, we followed Butch’s lead, silencing the squelch of boots in the dark, sulphurous mud. The bear scanned the horizon, somehow aware that more than just the sub-Arctic wind was intruding into its afternoon repose.
For a fleeting moment, seared forever on my mind, its gaze fell on three puny human forms, motionless on the tidal flat grass. Planting one huge paw in front, it shortened the length of the football pitch. Then its enormous form wheeled around and it ambled toward the sanctuary of Hudson Bay, just as we backtracked urgently to the safety of a larger cluster of humans behind.
It was late summer in northern Manitoba, when polar bears are forced on to the mainland by the melting Hudson Bay ice. There, amid the beach ridges of spruce conifers – a strikingly different backdrop to the snow and ice with which they are normally associated – the bears migrate northwards, either to mate or await the colder weather and a return to their natural icy hunting ground. Our group of 11, plus four guides, had come to witness this migration, at spell-bindingly close range – which later in our trip would become closer still.
We were on the south-western shore of the bay, a short distance east of York Factory, formerly the headquarters of that Canadian commercial powerhouse, the Hudson’s Bay Company. Described as “a small pocket of civilisation at the edge of the world”, York Factory declined as the world’s appetite for fur dwindled in the late 19th century. Now restored, the whitewashed building is a Canadian National Historic Site, but remains uninhabited for much of the year. The 20th and early 21st centuries have, in fact, done little to alter the remoteness of this starkly beautiful region. Our base, Nanuk Lodge, a cluster of simple wooden cabins, lay 137 miles from the nearest paved road, accessible only by six-seater aircraft from Gillam, a settlement around a hydroelectric dam, or by a protracted, bumpy journey by four-wheel drive.
In Gillam we had our first sense of how much we were at the whim of this raw landscape. Stranded in the tiny airport lounge, our disparate group of Americans, Canadians and one “Brit” waited for fog to burn off at our destination. Like strangers on a broken-down train, we bonded over card games, amusement at the Gillam tourism brochure rack (gapingly empty) and frustration at our lack of movement – until the pilot came in, several hours later, to announce that the fog had lifted.
Transport came in ever diminishing forms: the transatlantic Boeing, then a smaller plane from Winnipeg, then the six-seater that eventually took off from Gillam, then Honda all-terrain tugging vehicles with seated trailers to the rear and, ultimately, Shank’s pony when movement needed to be quiet. The trailers were perhaps most memorable. At every dip of the land, every rock in the rivers we crossed, every mud-spattering wheel spin on the soft tidal flats, we roiled and rolled and slid in synchrony.
Few know these contours more intimately than our guides. Many, like Butch, are Canadian First Nations, from the Cree people, whose forefathers were among the trappers crucial to the success of York Factory. We would rely upon their knowledge of the land, good humour and unerring tracking skills.
At first, however, the bears were elusive. On an initial foray onto the expansive meadow-like grasses, we snatched a long-range glimpse of a lone “boar”– as males are known – lumbering toward the Hudson Bay with a brief backward glance toward us. But this was one only for those with mega-zooms and a steady hand – for the naked eye it was little more than a fuzzy white shape moving toward the horizon.
The bears’ coyness had an unexpected effect. Much of our talk had been of the creatures, fact blurring with legend as tales were swapped of their incredible olfactory feats, aggressive stalking – even, it was rumoured, of beluga whales – and characters (“scavengers, absolute scavengers”, according to one old hand). But, as we travelled a short distance from the Hudson Bay shore, with the grasslands giving way to lunar-like mudflats, our chance of a sighting that day faded.
Almost imperceptibly, other players on this sweeping stage began to make their presence felt. That guttural croak over there? Why, those are sandhill cranes, the monogamous birds that spend summer here. What’s that, flapping rapidly away from the mosquito-choked thicket? A short-eared owl. (“Didn’t you notice how short its ears were?”) And what’s that on the ground there? Huge paw prints pressed into the mud by wolves, interlaced with hoof marks of the caribou or moose they were stalking. Oh, and there’s a wild strawberry (deliciously sweet), and the striking purple flower of the Indian paintbrush. While we’re stopped here, would you like to hold this bald eagle feather we’ve just found?
Soon we took our first, faltering steps into deciphering some of the clues of the wilderness. “Look, I can tell that’s a moose track.” “No, that’s definitely caribou – look at the way it is cleft.” I hazarded a guess at the source of a small collection of bones: “Is it from a wolf cub?” No – one of our guides identified the skeleton as a goose backbone.
The polar bears, we realised, were merely playing a bit-part in this landscape’s drama, as they passed through on their way back to their natural icy stamping grounds. They might be the world’s largest carnivore, but here they were vulnerable – many do not eat for the entire summer, fasting until they return to their usual seal-rich diet. Indeed, here they are arguably not even top of the food chain, a spot fiercely guarded by the wolf.
Yet, the polar bears’ cameo was the one we were all here to see – and we had still not seen them close up. As the season advances, bears often come right up to the perimeter fence of the lodge. But that was later, and on the third day, our last full one, our guides had a sense of urgency as they prepared to take us out. It had not, however, permeated all the visitors – a couple lingered too long over the home-cooked breakfast of French toast and maple syrup, delaying our departure. And so, to our guides’ chagrin, the whole party found themselves cut off by the high tide of a nearby river delta, forced to while away time until the waters ebbed later that morning.
Some of the group went to inspect the remains of a beluga whale skeleton, beached and picked clean, a little way towards Hudson Bay. I trudged a little farther, pausing by a pool lapping a bank of gravelly sand before the bay. Idly, I scraped my wellington boots in the soft mud of the receding water, watching as bubbles filtered to the surface before noticing the brisk approach of the rotund shape of Gordy, one of our guides.
“You’re playing a very dangerous game, my friend,” he chided as he drew near. “If a bear was on the other side,” he said, gesturing towards the sand bank, “you wouldn’t even see him before he got you – they can run at 30 kilometres an hour.”
Chastened, although slightly disbelieving, I headed back to the vehicles (I later checked and they can actually run even faster – Usain Bolt would comfortably be reeled in by a polar bear at full tilt).
After I heard of the bears’ speed on dry land, we finally crossed the river – and Butch highlighted their prowess in the water, indicating a white speck moving swiftly through the bay (in addition to their land speed, polar bears have been known to swim more than 150 miles non-stop). As we sat watching on logs by the shore, we started to wonder if this was as close as we would get.
And then, a veritable bear bonanza was under way. Where most of us could just see endless tidal flats, Butch saw polar bears – and lots of them. Inching nearer on the all-terrain vehicles, we cut the engines – and, impatient to get closer, I volunteered to follow Butch on foot, along with a Californian student photojournalist. After that exhilarating first encounter less than a football pitch away, we thought perhaps that the best was over. It wasn’t. Later, the whole group dismounted the vehicles and we concealed ourselves in the foliage of a mosquito-infested ancient beach ridge. Gooseberry thorns pierced my legs; then a plaintive cry of “I’ve got a bug in my pants” rang out from nearby scrub – I wasn’t the only one in discomfort.
Neither insects nor prickly bushes could distract from the mesmerising scene that followed, however. On the far side of a rough meadow, a sow nosed out into a clearing, with two young cubs in tow. Tentatively, she edged forward, sniffing the air, anxious to steer clear of several nearby boars. Making her way around the edge, she turned towards us, head raised. Perhaps it was a superfluous rustle – a gooseberry thorn or bug too far – but something spooked her. Breaking into a run, she veered toward the tree cover, her offspring gambolling behind. In one unforgettable movement, she reared onto her hind legs, her white body framed by a spruce behind as she surveyed the area for threats. Then she dropped back onto all-fours and moved swiftly away through a shield of trees, her infants still on her tail.
The incident dominated the dinner-table talk that evening as we tucked into tender steaks and Norwegian apple pie. Later, we watched the aurora borealis flicker, then dance in the night sky. A proper description remained as nebulous as ever, so I took to outlining the shapes they formed. On the left, look that’s a brontosaurus, while on the right, yes, that’s definitely the subject from Munch’s The Scream.
Perhaps the last vestiges of that game were still drifting in my subconscious the next day, as I gazed out from the tiny plane at the lodge and its hospitable staff disappearing below. We stayed low at first, spotting a few polar bears and the rusting hulk of a centuries-old wreck on a final fly-by. Then, with the aircraft rising as the tidal flats ebbed into taiga forest, I began to trace the shapes of the boreal landscape below. That game, too, had to stop as the human-wrought forms of a giant hydroelectric project and the functional grey of the purpose-built surrounding town eventually shifted into view – man-made shapes re-emerging from the wild.
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