Photo Tour of Churchill – Polar bear Capital of the World

So many people have been curious what the actual town of Churchill, Canada looks like. So I put together a Photo Tour of Churchill – the Subarctic Town only reachable by train or plane! Churchill is the polar bear capital of the world. There are no roads to the town. It’s above the 53^rd parallel and everyone either fly’s into the town or takes the train.

What does this remote subarctic town that is a wildlife hotspot look like? Come along – I’ll show you!

Side note: If you are wondering how to plan this trip or what it all cost, I wrote these two other posts:

HOW TO SEE POLAR BEARS IN CHURCHILL, MANITOBA

HOW TO SEE POLAR BEARS ON A BUDGET IN CHURCHILL, CANADA

I was so curious and had so many packing questions prior to our first visit to Churchill. What was the grocery store like? What was town like? Should I bring my yak tracks? What do the buildings look like? Just – what does the town look like?!?! I saw so many pictures of polar bears and beluga whales – but I was still so curious just simply have A Photo Tour of Churchill – the Subarctic Town only reachable by train or plane!

This post will focus on:

A Photo Tour of Churchill – the Subarctic Town only reachable by train or plane!

Check out those articles for all the how to do details. This post is a visual journey, a photo tour of Churchill – let’s go!

The train station in Churchill is a beautiful building. It also serves as a visitor center and has nice facilities.

Train tracks leading into Churchill.

I was SO curious what the grocery store looked like in Churchill. I had wished I had been able to find more pictures of the grocery store.

So…ta-da….

Outside of grocery store!

Here’s another view of the grocery store – the blue building on the left.

View of the inside part of the fruit and veg section.

They had bulk section too.

Buildings are Built to withstand the Extremes

When I first showed some people the hotel, building structures and homes in Churchill they responded with something like, “That was your hotel?!”

And I said, “Yep, sure was!”

Churchill is located above the 53^rd parallel. It is the subarctic. Throughout the year the temperature fluctuations are huge!  The winters are severely harsh and windy. Above was the Churchill Hotel, one of the main hotels in town.

When we see these types of structures in Antartica, our brains usually respond, “Oh yeah, that makes sense. Of course there needs to be simple, container like structures.” As is the case in Churchill too.

Above was the Seaport Hotel, also one of the biggest and main hotels in town.

The Iceberg Inn had some amazing art all around it.

The view leaving our hotel.

Churchill is often referred to as the ‘accessible arctic.’ The majority of people, should they wish, could go to Churchill. If you can handle a plane or train ride and get driven around in a vehicle, you can handle Churchill. Some of the other locations to try and see polar bears are much more difficult, physical and less likely odds to see the bears. There are some pretty fancy buildings for the location like the Polar Bears International building seen above.

Businesses in Churchill

Within the first couple minutes of being in Churchill it is apparent they love polar bears, a lot.

Everything that can have a polar bear on it has a polar bear on it.

Above is a beautiful painting, with polar bears, on the Hardware Store.

I know it’s a little hard to see in detail above, but that at least gives a visualization of a line of businesses in town. From right to left is: The Churchill Hotel –> Great White Bear Tours –> Iceberg Inn –> Hardware Store.

Above is a typical street of houses.

Here is another view of houses on the left as if one was walking into town. The train station is up ahead on the left and that blue building is the hardware store.

One of many welcome to Churchill signs. I did see some other people take their picture in front of this sign in the summer. There were bright and beautiful flowers around – a contrast to this darker day!

I loved this yard so much and thought it captured the spirit of most Churchill residents. If you look through the window in the door you can see the word “hope.” Residents take so much pride in their claim to fame as the ‘polar bear capital of the world.’ They also love their beluga whales, northern lights, birding and all the other aspects that go into making Churchill such a special and unique place.

This is what the bear proof garbage holders looked like in the residential areas.

Here was another style of bear proof garbage containers and this one was outside a restaurant.

Interesting Rules in Churchill

In Churchill, all vehicles are to remain unlocked at all times. No one locks their car. It is illegal to lock your vehicle in Churchill.

This is so in case anyone is walking at any time and they see a polar bear they can jump into the vehicle for safety. This is the culture and being safe in polar bear country is so important. All vehicles remain unlocked at all times.

10 PM Curfew

Every night at 10 pm a siren goes off. Back in the day we were told it was strictly enforced that no one was allowed to be walking past 10 pm. It is still very much the case that people do not walk past 10 pm, but there are not actual penalties anymore.

In general people do not walk after dark or even in the early mornings sometimes.

Ironically enough the best time of year to go running is the coldest parts of winter when it’s -20F/-29C. That is when all the polar bears should be on the ice. Encountering a polar bear on foot is a big deal. And most people don’t go running with their shot gun. September and October become one of the most dangerous times to be away from town on foot. The bears are at their hungriest waiting for the ice to freeze so they can get back out there and start eating seals.

Halloween is a Big Deal

We had no idea our good luck that we booked our trip over Halloween. Churchill LOVES Halloween. Being in such a small and remote town these are the types of events that really pull the community together.

But. Halloween, October 31^st, falls right at peak danger of being around polar bears. This timeframe is when the bears are the hungriest and encountering one poses the highest risk. So then to have a bunch children wandering the streets at dark or near dark can be a disaster.

So the whole town comes together for this. All the emergency personnel, the police, the fire trucks, natural resources and others basically form a perimeter around town. Above you can see three cars convening to talk about the plan. They are all connected with radios and can give an alert at the first signs of any polar bears trying to enter town. Some years even helicopters will be used to scan for bears.

The kids also start trick or treating earlier too. Any time after school the kids could start hitting the streets so they are not out at dark. Keep in mind it starts getting darker earlier up there. It’s almost impossible to avoid being out there when it’s not dark. We saw most kids trick or treating between 4pm-6pm.

And like many places where the possibility of cold and snow exists on Halloween, it was snowing and blowing in Churchill on Halloween of 2022! The kids were all layered up in jackets or their parents where just driving them from house to house in the freezing snow. Ahhhh…I remember those days too. Seen above, the lights flashing is emergency personnel driving around town looking for polar bears as kids started emerging for trick or treating.

Babies are no longer born in Churchill

This topic can be a bit of touchy subject. Since 1996 babies, except for emergencies, have not been birthed in Churchill. The reason being, despite Churchill having three doctors and decent medial facilities, if a birth and a serious emergency and any other people needing attention all went to the emergency room at the same time, it then becomes difficult to give all the people the attention they need.

There are systems and programs in place to help mothers and their families go down to Thompson or Winnipeg to give birth there. Obviously there are huge cons and stressors to this, but, that is the system in place now.

The Town Center Complex is Amazing!

Spanning the  225,000 square feet, the town center complex in Churchill is amazing! It’s an impressively huge, state of the art building that holds: the health center, school pre-K to grade 12, library, swimming pool, indoor playground, curling rink, theater, hockey arena, gymnasium, fitness center, several multi-use spaces and a cafeteria.

It was hard to get a photo of the entire building into one frame. And I wish in hindsight I had taken photos of the building section by section, but there it is! All the building spanning the back of this photo is the community center.

I did get a picture of the library.

Not to mention, the community center contains Churchill’s best kept secret:

The Polar Bear Slide!

;

Photo Tour of Churchill with an Indoor Playground

Right away we were so impressed by the indoor playground at the Churchill community complex. At first I thought that was kinda funny to have an indoor playground but then in about one second I realized, oh yeah, of course, that would have to be the case.

Churchill has extreme weather for many months of the year. There are no way kids will be playing outside on the playground.

It is way too dangerous to have a playground outside for kids with the potential of polar bears wandering into town.

Even in the summer months, the bugs can be horrendous. Yet another reason to have an indoor playground.
It could be raining.

Or it could have really intense sun rays.

All reasons to have this wonderfully massive indoor playground for kids to enjoy and parents to socialize easily around. The playground goes on for a lot larger of a space than this photo shows.

One Polar Bear for Every Resident

Globally it is estimated there are around 25,000 polar bears. Canada has around 15,000 of that population. And around Churchill there are an estimated 800 polar bears. The town of Churchill has around 800 residents….which means there is about one polar bear per resident for the town of Churchill. 😊

Interesting Images from Photo Tour of Churchill

I thought this pay phone was hilarious! It was as if it had directions for all the young people out there: Step 1 – lift the receiver. hahahahaha! Cracked me up. They did want pay phones around town in case someone didn’t have a cell phone and they needed to call a taxi if they were out late.

I love looking at bulletin boards so if you do too, this one’s for you! They are an excellent source of what is going on in a community.

Here was the weekly bear sightings report. 

There is a polar bear jail, or as it’s formally known Polar Bear Holding Facility.  Polar bears that come too close to town and cause trouble or are deemed dangerous by parks Canada are put in polar bear jail. It’s not a tourism site and visitors are not allowed. Polar bear jail is housed in a former military building and now has that cool mural on the outside.

Gosh, there’s even more to this photo tour of Churchill. Some sort of special energy pulses through the town. I hope this photo tour of Churchill at least gives you a little bit of an idea of regular life, buildings, streets and other aspects of town were like. To polar bears, belugas and more, if you wish, I hope you can get there to get your own photo tour of Churchill. If not, at least you got to go on this one. Thanks for coming along. 

***

Here are a few services we use to save money for trips like this. Combined so far I have saved almost $400 using these apps with purchases I would buy anyway (like milk!) 

Rakuten – current offer is $30 sign up bonus

Ibotta – current offer is $10 sign up bonus

Fetch – current offer is 2000 extra points 

And you best believe we fueled ourselves with coffee with our favorite electric kettle and coffee press. 

*Some of these links are affiliate links which means at absolutely no difference to you we might earn a very small commission. It’s an easy win-win way to support the upkeep of the site and thank you so much for doing so!