Five Things I Learned In Manitoba

In descending order of YAY.

1. Beluga whales are awesome, and they are everywhere in the south Hudson Bay. After spending almost two hours at sea off Vancouver Island before we had even our first possibility of seeing a whale (see my next post, because why would I do anything in chronological order), the belugas of Churchill were immediate and unmissable. The sea seethed with them; it boiled.

Terrible quality, I know. Still though: WHALES.

2. The mega-fauna of Churchill is surely its biggest draw (it's definitely why we were there), but if you find yourself there and at a loose end, the local Insanitaq Museum* is well worth a look. It's an extremely impressive collection of First Nations artefacts and stories, along with a few specimens of taxidermy which, while I've always found animal-stuffing a queasy proposition, give a sense of scale to the local wildlife that's hard to discern when jouncing in a dingy or being chased off a beach by a bear.

(Look at that lynx! It's like a rejected CGI model for a grimdark Tom and Jerry reboot.)

Of what I saw there, probably my favourite two things were a carved figurine of a Viking, strongly suggesting the First Nations had traded with them at some point, and the story about the giantess who tried to swallow a river. She'd been tricked into it by a man she was chasing, who claimed he crossed the river by drinking it dry and walking across the bed. Trying in vain to replicate the feat, the giantess drank so much she exploded in a cloud of blood and river-water. This, the legend tells us, is how fog came into the world.

Faultless. Superb. 11/10 would relate again. Just the most perfect theory about anything, ever.

* I kept having to bite my tongue to stop singing the name to the tune of Cypress Hill's "Insane In The Brain". I thought it might be insensitive.

3. The majestic polar bear, lads! Huge things. Mighty. Extremely lazy at this type of year, as they go into a kind of walking reverse-hibernation, but that just meant we got to check them out for longer. I saw so many of the white-furred carnage units that I lost count. Lost count! Of motherfucking polar bears! Ludicrous.

Obviously, they're lovely to look at from a distance, but they can cause problems when up close. Churchill has a polar bear jail, where the delightfully named "problem bears" are kept for a fortnight in the dark until they stop associating civilisation with an easy meal (usually they eat the contents of people's bins, rather than the contents of people's clothing). They're starved throughout their time in the hoosegow, which might seem cruel, but is born of necessity - the first year they ran the jail they kept the bears well-fed, with the consequence that, once released, the bears would immediately attempt to break back in for their regular round of seal-steaks.

Despite the apparent logic of keeping the bears hungry, environmental groups have in the past attempted the prisoners in order to offer a decent meal. This is considered a bad idea by the authorities, if for no other reason than the would-be liberators are liable to feed the bears much more directly than they had in mind. In our case, this led to the wonderful spectacle of our guide explaining that he wasn't allowed to tell us how many bears are in the prison at any time, but that he was sure it was currently empty any way, all to the soundtrack of the furious bellowing of famished bears from just inside the facility.

All of which is so delightful, I'd probably have put bears at the top of this post, had one of them not been so rude as to chase me off a beach when I was trying to take a dip. Dick move, ursus maritimus! 

4. Let's talk about the Prince Of Wales Fort on the Churchill River. Ordinarily, something like that wouldn't make it onto the blog. A symbol of British imperialism on First Nation land? Not the sort of thing that interests me at all.

I'm making an exception here, though, because it's a symbol of imperialist total fuck-ups, which are always worth sniggering about. The fort was supposed to take about thirty years to build, but it went operational early, with the people in charge thinking they'd found a way to cut a few unnecessary corners in the name of expedience. Specifically, the walls weren't as thick as whatever STC system the Royal Navy was making use of in the 18th century. Who cares, though? Who's going to be sending the really heavy ordnance so far north. Thinner walls were all that was needed to keep the fort safe from bears, locals, and bit of light cannon-fire; surely that would do the trick?

The first time they attempted to fire their own cannons, the recoil pushed them clear off the walls.

Presumably due to this false start, the fort ended up taking more time to build than had originally been planned. Not that it particularly seemed to matter. It didn't seem like anyone was in a hurry to challenge British interests in the Hudson. It was a long way north, and no-one else seemed quite so obsessed with the idea of finding the possibly-mythic North West Passage.

So the fort got finished, pointed its forty cannons in every direction, and everyone figured they were sitting pretty. The only small problem was that there weren't any troops. It took ten men to fire a cannon at maximum efficiency, so they needed four hundred trained men. They had one. Not one hundred; one, alongside three dozen civilian workers of various trades.

So everyone was super excited when, in 1782, three British ships sailed into view. It had been a while since the last re-supply, so the small fleet was a welcome sight in any case, but there was hope that the vessels might be carrying the military men needed to actually make the fort capable of combat.

This hope was rather dashed when the fort's governor took a close look at the ships with his telescope, and realised that under the billowing Union Jacks stood dozens of heavily-armed and angry Frenchmen.

Whilst the governor had discovered the ruse early enough to give battle, though, he still had the problem of lacking 99.75% of the men he needed to actually fight. Given this, he surrendered immediately - though not unconditionally - and the British left the fort. The French stuck around just long enough to eat all the food and sabotage all the cannons, then likewise fucked off.

So ends the pathetic story of the Prince Of Wales Fort. A monument twice over to almost getting something right, and then ruining it all in the very last step.

5. Clamato juice! It will not do! Have you ever cooked a tasty paella and realised to your horror you've over-salted it? What do you do? Bin it and start again? Bin it and order takeaway? Force yourself to eat it regardless?

No wrong answer there, surely. The only wrong answer - and PAY HEED, North America - would be to put the paella in the fridge, and drink the juice from the bottom of the bowl the following morning. 

No

Yeeuch.

Bonus anti-YAY:

Air Canada are goddamn evil. They were perfectly lovely when we travelled with them, I freely admit. But F and I were in a Winnipeg bar when the news came on that the entire city of Yellowknife was being evacuated due to encroaching wildfires. Air Canada's response to this was to take their ticket prices on the day of evacuation, and ratchet them up by a factor of ten.

Fuck Air Canada.