White Whales

I'm no veteran kayaker by any stretch of the imagination (just three times as of the writing of this blog post) but I'd wager to say that it's rarely a good thing when you feel contact on your kayak from below. It's not another kayaker, after all. 

But sure enough, we are paddling on the Churchill River in August of this year and that's exactly what happened. Thump! Contact. The kayak wobbles a little.

"What are you doing back there?" asked my wife (we were in a double kayak, sometimes known as divorce kayaks), like I'm intentionally rocking the kayak for fun or something. "It wasn't me." I replied. "It was a whale."

Welcome to summer kayaking in Churchill, Manitoba.

Would this guy ever rock the boat while kayaking? I don't think so.

We have been flirting with a visit to Churchill to see polar bears for years now. Two things constantly swirled in our yes or no debate to visit or not visit: (1) the certainty around seeing wildlife that we can't see anywhere else and (2) the cost. Late last year, we finally got over the cost thing and decided to plop down the cash for a trip to the shore of the Hudson Bay. That left one decision to make: when to go?

There are basically three different seasons to visit Churchill: winter, summer and fall. Fall is bear season, when the chances of seeing polar bears are their highest. We really, really wanted to see a polar bear in the wild but we didn't want to put all our eggs in one basket. I mean what if we didn't see a polar bear? What else is there in the fall? Winter is aurora borealis season, when the skies are dark and the solar wind lights up the sky in all sorts of colors. But the bears are out on the ice in winter. No bears, no trip for us.

So we looked at what we might see in the summer. There was still the opportunity for bear watching. Not guaranteed but then when is anything related to nature and wildlife tourism guaranteed? But something else happens in the summer in the Hudson Bay right next to Churchill: beluga whales populate the Bay in the tens of thousands (like 50,000 plus) to breed and give birth. Summer offered maybe bear sightings. But it we didn't get bears, we'd definitely get belugas. Summer won.

Beluga tail. Churchill River.

We've been whale watching before. I'm not sure I've ever whale watched with my wife and ever come away super excited. Whale watching is most times (at least in my experience) an exercise in limited engagements with things that generally spend a lot of time invisible below the water and then pop up for a few seconds before dropping back down below the surface of the water. Sure, we've seen some humpbacks lunge feeding off the coast of Boston and we've seen a couple of full body breaches (also humpbacks) in Hawaii but a breach takes like seconds so unless the whale is repeatedly breaching (ours were not) then it's again seconds of excitement.

Mostly, for us, whale watching has been water watching. Lots of nothing punctuated by seconds of possibility that rarely pay off.

But 50,000 whales in one location? Seemed too good to be true. I know the Hudson Bay is big. Like bigger than Texas big. But 50,000 seemed like we should be in for a whale watching experience like we'd never had before. We had two whale watching outings on our itinerary: one fairly large boat that would take us from Churchill to the Prince of Wales Fort National Historic Site and one six or seven or so person rigid inflatable boat (RIB) that got repeatedly referred to as a Zodiac because of the company that makes the boats. Neither trip, by the way, actually made it out into the Hudson Bay proper. We'd spend all our whale watching time on the Churchill River, which I assume has decidedly fewer than 50,000 belugas in it at any one time.

The larger boat was probably a smaller version of the type of boat we'd been whale watching on before, meaning elevated a bit off the surface of the water. The Zodiac was a lot closer to the River. Like we could have dipped our hands into the water. I was excited for the Zodiac ride.

Belugas surfacing next to a Zodiac with all the people looking the opposite way.

So let's skip the suspense here, if there really was any to begin with. There were a lot of belugas in the Churchill River no matter what sort of boat we happened to be on. On a typical ocean-going whale watch trip, maybe there are double digit numbers of whales in view at any one time. Maybe. And that would be an extremely good trip to watch whales. I'm not sure I've actually ever seen double digit whales on a whale watching trip before. With belugas? Easily possible to see 20 or so at a time by looking out over the water. And there is likely a lot of opportunity for close up looks.

Two things help here. First, the whales surface a lot. I don't know whether it's just the species in general or the fact that there are new babies involved but belugas surface frequently. More surfacing equals more looks. No waiting 10 or 15 minutes for a single whale to surface hopefully somewhere near the boat for seconds and be gone again. Lots of arched backs with the belugas. It's almost more like dolphin watching more than whale watching. 

Second, they are white. Well, the adults are white at least (the babies are sort of a dark gray color). And that body tone combined with shallow dives means you can see the whales even when they are under water. 

Take a look at the picture below. I know it's difficult to tell in some spots whether a splash on the surface of the water is a wave or a whale and it's also difficult to tell if a whitish spot is a breaker or an underwater cetacean but there are legitimately between six and twelve whales in the picture below. And that's just looking out one side of the boat. I know it's not 50,000 but this is more whales than I've ever seen in one spot in my life. We chose summer in Churchill hoping for polar bears with a pretty much guaranteed safety net in beluga spotting. Beluga watching ended up being better than polar bear watching.

The three whale pictures to this point in the post were all snapped from the bigger boat on our way to the Prince of Wales Fort. The Zodiac blew away that boat.

Before we get to the up close beluga encounters we had on the Zodiac, let me say that by and large, we had pretty good weather in our week or so in Canada, including when we were on the water in boats of all sorts of sizes and shapes and occupancies. Except when we were on the Zodiacs. It was cold (like mid-50s) with wind and rain. 

I decided I'd wear a rain jacket, a fleece, hiking pants and boots (I wore more than just that but go with this for a couple of sentences). The rain jacket and boots were waterproof. When I got off the boat my socks were warm and dry (other than the bit that poked over the top of the boots) and my fleece below my rain jacket was also warm and dry. Everything between those two points on my body was soaking wet and cold. I can't remember being so cold and wet in recent memory. My teeth were chattering I was so cold. But the whale watching was just excellent.

Beluga watching from the Zodiac.

Zodiac appreciation time.

The difference between being on a deck of a large boat maybe four feet above the water level and leaning against a let's say 3-1/2 foot high railing and being inches above the Churchill River with an inflated perimeter on a boat about 2 feet high is huge. You can see the water better but for sure you can see the whales way better. You almost feel you can reach out and touch the belugas (although no touching the whales please; zero touch policy!).

The difference between being on a boat with about 20 people is also way different than being on one with about seven. The Zodiac was stable enough and big enough to stand up and walk around with a little holding on (although maybe "shift position" rather than "walk around" is more accurate) but it is also so small that seeing from one side of the boat to the other was never an issue. And when there are so many whales at times surfacing all around the boat, seeing 360 degrees is important. You never know where the next one is going to and that's a good thing. 

If you've ever ridden on an RIB before, you'll understand that one of the extreme advantages they have over other craft is that they are way, way faster. We blue whale watched on an RIB off the coast of Los Angeles years ago and the pilot could react instantly to wherever the whales surfaced. At Churchill, other than the initial trip out into the body of the water, us needing the RIB speed to pursue whales quickly wasn't really an issue for us here since there were so many whales all around us.

But, there was one feature of the Zodiac's speed that helped the whale watching for us. Belugas like to chase the wakes of boats and it seemed to me that the faster the boat was going, the more they chased. It was like having your own whale entourage right behind the boat. And when that entourage was a mother and baby and they kept both popping their heads up again and again, it made this experience very worthwhile.

If you ever make it to Churchill in summer and have the opportunity to go beluga watching, go on a Zodiac. And I hope that it's warmer than our trip; it took about 15 minutes in a hot shower to mostly warm up. But even if it is cold, it's worth it. Bring rain pants. Lesson learned there.

Belugas in front of and behind the Zodiac. The best baby head picture is the last pic. Mom is underwater.

If you are proofreading this post as you are enjoying my excitement about whale watching, I suppose you might be thinking "hey, what happened to the kayaking?" and you'd be right to wonder. We weren't supposed to go kayaking on this trip. We were supposed to take two boat rides to see belugas. Somehow kayaking got squeezed into the agenda. We ended up with three different beluga watch experiences. What a bonus!

To be completely clear here, kayaking with belugas may be a top ten travel experience for me. I'm not sure how many top ten travel experiences I would identify in my life so maybe I'm a bit too bullish on this being better than all but nine other travel days. Maybe it's top 25. Suffice it to say that it was incredible. Having a whale bump your kayak is one of those things I never thought I'd experience. Forget whales as close as 20 or 30 feet away or even like 5 or 6 feet away like in the Zodiac. We are talking whales inches from us.

Kayak safety briefing (top) and getting to the kayaks for launch.

Some folks on our kayaking adventure managed to paddle fast enough to create a wake so belugas would follow their kayaks. We didn't. No way on my third ever kayaking journey can I make a double kayak cut through the water that fast. Fortunately, if you are getting belugas to follow your speed, it's not like you can even see them. And...belugas are naturally curious like most whales. If there's something on the surface of the water, eventually they will likely want to take a close look.

So the pictures below are just a curious beluga cruising by and then underneath our kayak just to see what's up. This whale passed literally maybe a foot below where we were sitting and we could see how close it was as it passed below our kayak. A few minutes on one side or another of that swim-by look, a younger beluga popped its head above the water literally right next to my hip, looked at me (at least that's what I think it did), exhaled with a little spray and then dove back under. 

Other than maybe the elephants at the Sheldrick Wildlife Trust in Kenya (where we were allowed to touch the elephants), that surfacing was as close as I've come to a real wild mammal in my life. And you could even debate if the elephants at Sheldrick are truly wild when they are being cared for and fed every day by humans. This is not something that happens regularly. 

I don't know what else really to say here. Kayaking on the Churchill River for maybe 90 minutes or so was an experience that connected us to wildlife right up there with the best and most intimate experiences we've ever had. Right up there with elephants and chimpanzees and mountain gorillas. And if there's a common thread there, it's exceptional intelligence. 

We are so lucky that for whatever reason, someone at our tour company decided to add kayaking with belugas as a freebie experience onto our agenda. The Zodiac ride was in many ways better than kayaking (particularly considering the work required to paddle the kayak around) but the kayak inches from the water was the most supremely intimate way to see the belugas. 

And that divorce kayak thing? We are still married. We figured it out. Coordinating paddles and turning is way more difficult as a twosome. If we just had one person (me) just do all the paddling, it was way better. While it might be easy for me to view that solution as less than equitable, I didn't see it that way. Me paddling changed our kayak dynamic from one of conflict and focusing on each other and what we were doing to one of calm and focusing on the whales. And that's exactly what we were supposed to be doing. 

For some reason, I love kayaking pictures with our paddles in them. It's a symbol for me of the freedom that those oars give us. Those things powered by our own strength moves us through water. No motors or anything else, just one stroke after another. When there are whales in the pictures they are that much better.

I like the calm of the picture below. How could we imagine a better way to spend a couple of hours on a summer evening?

The Treaties

Canada and the United States have a lot in common. It may not seem like that today in the year 2026 but they do. For sure. And "a lot in common" may be selling the situation way short. It might be "a whole lot" to "a ton" in common. And yes, a ton is more than a lot or a whole lot.

Shall we review a little? Think about it. Both nations were former British colonies that achieved independence from that nation. Both countries had Atlantic Ocean to Pacific Ocean nation-building ambitions that were ultimately quite successful. Both countries courted the British colony of British Columbia to join their nation in the mid-1800s (although only one was ultimately successful). And both countries absolutely decimated the livelihood of those people who were on the North American continent before Europeans started landing on these shores and started taking every piece of land for themselves.

Didn't see that last one coming, maybe? Didn't think Canada and the United States had that in common? Oh they did. There's no doubt about that. There can be no understating just how brutal the conquering of this continent was by the white man both above and below the current Canada-United States border. The lives of those who were here before Europeans arrived in what is now North America were completely upended in absolutely the worst and most destructive way. 

Can't quite wrap your head around that one? Think about it this way. What if a heavily armed group of people with skin color a lot different that yours showed up at your door today, took possession of your house and all your belongings and money, handed you a snow shovel and told you that from now on you just needed to figure out how to survive with the clothes on your back and your snow shovel. Oh...and you can't sleep or take up residence on any public lands. How long would you last? Not too long, I'm guessing. I know I wouldn't. 

I don't know why I picked a snow shovel by the way. It just popped into my head. It could have been a set of andirons or a rechargeable leaf blower or anything, really.

The Forks, at the confluence of the Red River and Assiniboine River, Winnipeg.

Let's do a quick (and I do mean quick) historical overview of relations with First Nations (yes, I know that's typically a Canadian-only term) peoples north and south of the United States / Canada border, shall we?

Both the United States and Canada gave their federal government the right to regulate indigenous affairs. The United States did it through the Constitution; Canada did it through Royal Proclamation. That's cool, right? Countries passing laws and rules to allow them to govern people who happened to be living on land "owned" by the newly established nations without the say so of those people. Sounds good to me.

Both the United States and Canada negotiated treaties with indigenous peoples to define land owned by people of European descent and land designated for indigenous use. The catch on most of those treaties was that the governments of the United States and Canada either just didn't honor the conditions of the treaties or called for the treaties to be renegotiated when the government "made a mistake" in the original treaty (like not realizing there was gold in the Black Hills in what is now South Dakota when the original Treaty of Fort Laramie was signed).

Both the United States and Canada tried to systematically destroy indigenous culture particularly by (1) imposing western notions of land ownership on indigenous peoples; (2) causing the near extinction of the bison to remove food, shelter and meaning from indigenous life; (3) introducing deadly diseases into native communities for which there was no protection; and (4) forcibly removing indigenous children off reservations to attend special schools designed to foster assimilation into western society. These schools (called Residential Schools on both sides of the border) removed traditional clothing, required western haircuts and conferred western names on children while also prohibiting indigeous languages and religious practices. 

Know when indigenous people were granted the right to vote? In the United States, it was 1924. In Canada, it was 1960. 

Dog sledding with Wapusk Adventures, Churchill.

Having said all that, there are some differences between how those two countries view that history today.

I can't remember ever traveling within the United States anywhere and being apprised of how the land I was standing on was ceded to the United States government by treaty with an indigenous tribe. Maybe my memory is faulty here. I know I've seen land acknowledgements written in National Park properties and (of all places) in multiple buildings in downtown Chicago. But the specific treaty? And talked through it? Don't think so.

In Canada this summer? Different story. Our tour that took us to Churchill and Riding Mountain National Park started off with a spoken land acknowledgement and we talked about the treaties that conveyed the lands we were visiting pretty much every time we went somewhere new. Maybe it was the specific places we visited. Maybe it was our tour company's choice to emphasize this information. Maybe it's that we were traveling for a time with someone of First Nations ancestry. Maybe this sort of thing only occurs in Manitoba and not in other parts of Canada. 

But all that's not true. Because last summer when we were in Alberta we ran into the same thing, particularly at the Calgary Stampede and the Elbow River Camp set up at that event. We heard speeches listing various treaties (all numbered) acknowledging just how land was removed from First Nations control and handed over to Canada. It all seemed very civil but to me, it was somewhere between eye-opening, shocking and refreshing. Although after this year, I'm not sure it was as healthy a history as it was portrayed at the Elbow River Camp.

Elbow River Camp, Calgary Stampede. 2025.

So how many treaties were signed between Canada and First Nations people? 11. Treaties 1 through 7 were negotiated between 1871 and 1877 and the other four followed from 1899 to 1921. On our August trip we traveled over lands covered under Treaty 1 (1871), Treaty 2 (also 1871) and Treaty 5 (1875). 

Negotiated may be a term that's very generous to the Canadian government.

Know what Canada got out of all those treaties? A whole lot of land, that's what. And some other strange things like guarantees around violence towards Canadians and restricted alcohol use and control of all schooling on First Nation Reserves. Those last two things are just control measures, right? They are just oppressions. In exchange for all that land, the First Nations got a whole lot of land taken away, a little bit of cash, farming tools (for people who weren't generally farmers), the right to fish and hunt on lands they gave up and some schools. But they only got schools when the government of Canada decided it was appropriate.

So what does this effort to inform us about various treaties do? There's not really any context around the Treaties described when we are told what land we are standing on. We are just told we are now on Treaty [insert number here] land. The exact conditions of each Treaty aren't really described to the visitor. But at least it's a start. At least there's an acknowledgement that at one time, the country we are visiting negotiated an agreement (likely one-sided) with the people who were here before European people where the Europeans got the land in exchange for something which really ended up being nothing much.

Canadian history seems to be full of retroactive actions around the treatment of First Nations peoples and I guess from a certain point of view, it's better late than never. In 2008, the Canadian government launched a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to research and document the effects of the Residential School system. The finding of the Commission was that the Residential Schools amounted to cultural genocide and they issued recommendations to apologize for and correct the effects of those Schools. 

Of course most of the recommendations really amount to nothing much more that promised apology. There is nothing the government of Canada can do to un-do what they did. They can't go back and populate the plains full of bison; they can't un-kill all the people that we were wiped out by disease or just killed by white people; and they can't un-destroy all the culture that they tried to eradicate along the way. Apologies, unfortunately, are about all these are or can be.

The interior of the Itsanitaq Museum, Churchill. The Museum collects Inuit carving and artifacts.

Even if all of this stuff is an apology. I believe talking about all this is important when we travel. Even if we don't get into all the details. Even if we get biased versions of the truth, at least we are discussing it. We can go research the history on our own later if we want to, which is exactly what I have done to write this post. At least it's something different than we do in the United States. 

On this trip, we deliberately engaged with places and people that have been affected by the Numbered Treaties. A lot of this was decided by our tour company on an agenda which was handed to us. But we also visited other spots that maintained the same theme and we did it before we started our tour. This is something we care about engaging with so we appreciated our tour company's efforts to supplement the themes of our one day on our own in the Winnipeg area before the tour started.

All told, our engagement with the First Nations of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Riding Mountain National Park and Churchill included two museums; two historic properties; two cultural talks or activities; a couple of walks around towns or parts of cities; and some time on a dog sled. If the dog sled based on the picture above seems like just a ride in the woods on a sled pulled by a team of dogs (which it was on some level, and all rescue dogs by the way),  the business is First Nations / Métis owned and that's how First Nations people got around at one time. I mean it's not like there are roads all over Manitoba even today (it's actually impossible to drive to Churchill). Dogs pulling sleds over snow is far safer and more efficient that pretty much all other methods of transportation. 

We spent time listening to or in conversations with Anishinaabe, Sayisi Dene, Inuit and Métis peoples and we probably learned something from absolutely every talk whether it was who the Métis people were and are or how many calories a sled dog burns or how long it takes two men to build an igloo or something else. Horizons were broadened, which for me is most of the point of travel. 

And 12,000 calories per day is the answer to the dog question and less than an hour to build an igloo. But only if its the right kind of snow.

It is likely impractical to relay everything we learned talking with First Nations people so I'm picking one thing each from the three places we visited, starting with Riding Mountain National Park.

Pemmican

On one of our two afternoons in Riding Mountain National Park, we ventured over to Turtle Village, an off-the-grid camp which offers overnight accommodations and afternoon and evening storytelling sessions, including one to introduce visitors to pemmican, a kind of bison jerky that was created by drying out meat from a hunt; pounding it into powder; supplementing the powder with melted animal fat, fruit and spices; and then consolidating the mixture into what was described as the first ever power bar. If stored right, pemmican could last years (the timeline offered here was "decades") and was essential for survival during times when hunting wasn't possible.

We didn't actually make pemmican (that would have been a longer process than the hour or so we spent at Turtle Village) but we did each cook up a customized, personal mixture of dried fruits, nuts and spices based on our selection from a buffet table of local ingredients or ingredients that would have been available to First Nations people through trade, including dried saskatoon berries, peppercorns and maple syrup. I guess we ideally would have fashioned our personal concoction into a bar of some sort and taken it with us on a hunt but since we weren't hunting elk or bison or anything else on this trip, it became an afternoon snack eaten out of a tray. 

I'd never had saskatoons (which are blueberry-like) and I was surprised how soft both hazelnuts and peppercorns become when cooked quickly over a high-heat open flame. The demonstration emphasized the point of the necessity for drying out ingredients when plentiful to preserve foods for times when nothing was available. But it was also interesting to think about how First Nations people would have ingredients like cinnamon and peppercorns from far away available to them. It was also probably the healthiest food we ate all week.

The Métis

One of the differences between the United States' persecution of indigenous people and Canada's persecution of the First Nations people was that Canada managed to do their southern neighbors one better and extended their discrimination not only to First Nations, but anyone who actually interfaced with them in a positive way. Enter the Métis, a group of intermarried First Nations and European settlers with a distinct and unique national culture. 

The Métis became a thing when early fur traders in the new world (mostly French and Scottish) married First Nations women (primarily Cree). Over time, the descendants of these first marriages evolved into a community of people with their own language, music, flag and system of farming. Their farming was unique. It was based around long, narrow lots providing each property both with river access and close proximity to their neighbors. The Métis settled on land in Manitoba which was part of a massive area called Rupert's Land, which was basically the drainage basin of the Hudson Bay over which the Hudson's Bay Company had exclusive trading rights.

In 1868, the entirety of Rupert's Land was conveyed to the Dominion of Canada which then set about dividing the land into settlements, including the land already occupied by the Métis. The Métis leader, Louis Riel, led a series of resistance efforts to hamper the Canadian government's efforts to enforce various Proclamations, including those around land redistribution and (perhaps unbelivably) the sale of pemmican. Yes, there was a war waged over pemmican and restrictions on it's distribution. Insane, right?

We learned a little about the Métis at the Riel House National Historic Site in Winnipeg (shown above) including the events of the Pemmican War and the hanging of Louis Riel by the Canadian government. The Métis are still around today as a distinct and proud part of the population of Canada. They are remarkably visible if you look, which I guess is encouraging.

English, French and First Nations syllabics. On a commercial airline flight. 

Broken Promises

Our conversations with First Nations and Métis people in Manitoba was littered with acts of ethnic violence and promises by the Canadian government that were never fulfilled. We heard these stories in Riding Mountain National Park (the Anishinaabe were burned out of their homes by white settlers) and Winnipeg but we heard them most notably in Churchill from Florence Hamilton in a cultural presentation one night in Churchill. 

The thread of our discussion with Florence included a serious lack of personal cultural identity, pretty much all at the hands of the Canadian government. The Dene were forcibly relocated to the Churchill area and prohibited from participating in their annual caribou hunt starting in the in 1950s. The land they were assigned was leftover land and by the mid-1970s it was abandoned by the Dene. By that time, their ties to their past way of life was destroyed. As if that wasn't bad enough, Florence's mother was a Residential School survivor and she took the teachings to heart, raising Florence without connection to her people's background. I think that sometimes, we think people can recover from something like forced re-education. Apparently not.

It is difficult for those of us who are in the majority to understand these types of concepts sometimes but it's important to listen and see that other perspective. When asked if there was anything that the Canadian government could do to make things better going forward, she pretty much acknowledged that there was no fix. But she did hope that the government would just stick to the agreements that they already negotiated rather than ignoring them. It's not encouraging when your only hope for things not to get worse is for people who have historically broken promises to start keeping them.

An inuksuk, a traditional Inuit landmark, in front of the Itsanitaq Museum, Churchill.

I believe there is value in preserving what is unique and special about every place on our planet. I don't want everything to be the same wherever I go. Sometimes I feel I'm being selfish about this issue because I usually think of it in terms of food. By that I mean something like...I don't want KFC to be in every neighborhood in the whole world that I travel to but if people in Japan or Botswana or wherever it is want KFC, who am I to deny them?

It's a little more complicated for me when I move off the food analogy. But if our time in Canada this summer taught me anything, it's when the United States and (in the case of this post) Canada, imposed their sameness of dominant culture from coast to coast, it almost or completely destroyed some things that are valuable to not just tourists like me but others as well. And in this case, those others are the people who actually still remain from the culture that is conquered or overwhelmed or bypassed or whatever you want to call it and still feel there is value in being different.

So maybe everyone doesn't need access to pemmican so they can survive the winter when there's no hunting. Although with this summer's outbreak of diseased produce of all varieties here in the United States since we stopped apparently inspecting food, maybe I should be eating pemmican. But there IS value in being connected to our ancestors and the past whether that manifests itself in dog sledding through the woods or being able to hunt caribou or being able to farm in a way that's different than most people farm or even gathering fruits and nuts. We shouldn't destroy things just because they are not important to us personally. Eventually, it will matter to all of us.

The cover picture of this post is a detail from a painting called Arctic Apocalypse #2 by Abraham Anghik Ruben, an Inuvialuk Canadian artist. We found this work in the Winnipeg Art Gallery in downtown Winnipeg on the first full day of our trip. I think it makes a good cover post.

Eating healthily. Saskatoons, hazelnuts, peppercorns, maple syrup and a few other things.

Riding Mountain

Last month, we went to Churchill, Manitoba to find polar bears. We succeeded, seeing six in our four days in town. And it was really finding five in our last day in the Churchill Wildlife Management Area, which was exactly the place we were supposed to find white bears.

Our trip to Churchill was a group tour. We've taken these from time to time over the last 13 or so years when it really seems there are advantages to have someone else take care of the logistics of getting from Point A to Point B. This tour was a nine day tour, with the Churchill part of the tour occupying all or parts of days five through eight. Before we went to Churchill, we met our group in Winnipeg. After that, we spent two nights in a place called Riding Mountain National Park, a Parks Canada property about two or so hours north of Winnipeg by bus.

The theme of the tour that we took was Canada's Big Five, a play on Africa's Big Five wildlife designation, which we've searched for a number of times since we started traveling to sub-Saharan Africa in 2015. There of course is no universally acknowledged Canadian Big Five; it's something our tour operator made up and assigned as the polar bear, the beluga whale, the moose, the black bear and the bison. Churchill was supposed to cover the first two of those animals. Riding Mountain was supposed to cover the last three. Although in reverse, so to speak.

Time to report on our time in Riding Mountain.

How gorgeous is the picture above, by the way? There was lots of this in Riding Mountain. Early morning with mist coming off the water. It's absolutely spectacular. If you've ever seen a moose in the wild, it looks like a perfect place to find moose, right? 

We'll come back to that.

Welcome to Riding Mountain National Park.

Our time in Riding Mountain got off to an historic start, and by that I mean we entered through the historic, 1930s East Gate. At one time, most gates at Parks Canada National Parks looked something like the picture above. They are now all gone. Except for the East Gate at Riding Mountain. It's the last one in existence and it looks terrific. This was a special way to enter this Park.

Our two nights in Riding Mountain were completely immersive. And by that, I mean that once we got into the Park, we remained in the Park. Our hotel (in the town of Wasagaming) was in the Park. We ate in the Park. And we did everything else for about 36 hours that we could have done in the Park. We entered and we didn't leave. We even had lunch served to us in the bandstand in the main park by the lake in Wasagaming and we ate a catered, three-course meal by the side of a (different) lake in the Park proper.

So about that wildlife...

Our wildlife watching in the Park began with our initial drive from the East Gate to the town of Wasagaming (pronouced WA-sa-GA-ming in Hopwood phonetics) followed by four hours-long evening and morning drives (that's two evening drive and two morning drives) to specific locations within the Park. The sun comes up early in central Manitoba in early August and it goes down late, so drives starting at 6 a.m. and ending at 9 p.m. are still daylight drives.

Our safari vehicle for our two days is shown in the picture above. Small and nimble I guess but photographing wildlife from the vehicle is done by opening the tiny windows at the top of the glazing on each side. Inconvenient? Sure! Until I figured out how to position my body, I got a bunch of shaky photographs. But small windows admit fewer mosquitoes. And I don't think I have seen as many mosquitoes in any one spot in recent memory as I saw in Riding Mountain. Thank God we didn't encounter blackflies, which our guides swore were around in profusion as recently as the prior week (deet repels mosquitos but not blackflies). Suffice it to say there was much mosquito swatting going on in that van or bus or whatever it is really classified as.

So we are about 20 minutes in to our first wildlife drive on the first evening we are in the Park and lo and behold by the side of the road is a black bear eating some berries. Like right by the side of the road and 20 minutes might be actually further into our actual drive than when we found this bear. It might have been 10 minutes. How great is this? And legitmately, like our entire busful of tourists is making a ton of excited noises when we pull over for a better look.

Bus stops, everyone stands up, tiny windows get opened and some shaky picture taking ensues. And it's not just one black bear. It's a mother and cub. How amazing is this? We are on a Canada's Big Five (made up, I realize still) tour and like 10 minutes (yes, I'm officially revising the number...) into our first search for the black bear / moose / bison portion of the Big Five and we see two black bears. Damn! How great is this?

And yes, I realize the pictures above just show one bear. Blame it on the rushed, shaky picture taking.

Of course...they took off. I'm not saying it was all the noise coming from the bus loaded with 18-20 or so wildlife tourists, but it might have been. I mean, it's difficult to really assess how loud you are being outside of the bus when you are inside of the bus, especially when you are super excited and actually one of the sources of the noise. But it might have been the noise coming from the bus.

Still, we are between 10 and 15 minutes into the first of four wildlife drives and we spot two bears. Go us!!!

We didn't see another black bear the entire tour.

One of our guides demonstrating how a bear might have made the claw marks on the Stop sign pole; this does not count as a bear sighting.

Before we get to some things that we DID see in Riding Mountain, what is the deal with Canada and black bears and our vacations? This is the second summer in a row that we've explored some Parks Canada National Parks where bears allegedly live in at least reasonable numbers and we have seen fewer bears combined than we can count on one hand. Last summer...one black bear. This summer...two. And it's not like we spent an hour or two total or something roaming around looking for wildlife. We spent at least (and I'm guessing here) 25 hours each summer looking for bears. At least.

Admittedly, the one look we got last summer was spectacular.

So yes, we saw bison. And yes, that's exciting. It's not every day that we get to see bison. By the same token, we've seen bison in a number of places over the last decade or so, including Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, South Dakota and North Dakota. We've seen way more bison in most of each of our days bison-watching than we've seen black bears in our lives.

Is it difficult to find bison in Riding Mountain National Park? The answer to that is yes and no. We went looking for bison twice on this trip. We found one and only one on our first drive and way too many to reflect any sort of accurate count the second time. I'd love to report that we got lucky the first time and super lucky the second time but the bison in RMNP are in an enclosure that's fenced and cattle-guarded to prevent the bison from leaving the enclosure.

Granted, it's a big enclosure but these are some large mammals. I'd say we got lucky on the second drive and somewhat unlucky on the first.

But these were also some particularly good looks. Rare are the times I've been super close to a bison. On this trip, there were a number of these animals right alongside the road next to our van. Like less than three feet away. We also saw some nursing going on and let me say that the force with which a baby bison slams his or head into their mother's udder is concerning in its viciousness. These are some powerful strikes to coax a little milk out of mom. I can't imagine that it's comfortable in any way for the mother. Still...when you have kids, sometimes it's not easy, I guess.

The calving was cool. I still feel bad for the moms, though.

We also managed to find a good number of active or abandoned beaver lodges in our time driving around the Park and we actually managed a look at an actual live beaver. My best picture is immediately above. The beaver is the small thing (it's just its head) in the water right above the grass at the bottom of the picture. The shiny ripple on the right side of the photograph is the beaver's wake as it's moving across the pond.

And yes, we also found birds. I mean why wouldn't we find birds? My best five bird pictures from the Park are below and feature the best photographs I've ever taken of a yellow-bellied sapsucker (first pic); some barn swallows (second pic); and a black and white warbler (third pic). The other two (spotted sandpiper and merlin) are new species for me. Cool stuff. But we did go out on drives four times for multiple hours.

I'm not complaining exactly about the birdlife and to be fair, we weren't just birdwatching, but I can find more birds up close in a park near our home in Northern Virginia in a couple of hours than we found in four multiple hours-long wildlife drives in Riding Mountain. Maybe it sounds like that's an actual complaint and maybe it is. I need to hold on to the "best picture ever" of three individual bird species. That admittedly, I didn't need to go all the way to Canada to see.

So lots of bison, two black bears, a beaver and a few (admittedly excellent) looks at birds. What about the moose? 

No moose. We got nothing. Zero. Nada. The squadoosh. Not a one. Unless you count the two at the bottom of this post.

Ultimately and because of the moose and two black bears, Riding Mountain will go down as a bit of a disappointment for me. Do I sound spoiled? I think I do. There are only so many people on this planet that get to go explore other countries (like EVERY year) looking for all sorts of amazing wildlife and I am for sure one of them. And I'm complaining because I only saw two bears and didn't find a moose in a couple of days in a Park? Yeah, I am. Just a bit.

We understand what the expectation is for wildlife sightings on a wildlife tour and that number starts and ends with none. Seeing animals in the wild is at their pleasure, not ours. But in so many ways, this side trip was supposed to be a warm up for the main event in Churchill where we (hopefully, please hopefully) would find polar bears in the wild. But it didn't really warm us up. If anything, it made us more nervous about seeing nothing in and around Churchill.

Overall, this trip was a success for us. We wanted to see polar bears and we saw them. We also got some other unique experiences out of this trip that were supremely valuable and special that will be extolled in blog posts not yet written. Sometimes, emotions get in the way. They did here because Riding Mountain I think was advertised to us as a wildlife experience and I forgot about the wildlife guarantee discussed in the prior paragraph in this post. I need to hold on to the bison calving, the amazing bird pictures and the beaver.

The two almost moose we saw in Riding Mountain are below. So I guess we saw three black bears after all.