Our focus today was pre-positioning ourselves back in the Peg for our flights home tomorrow. But first we had a chance to see a few remaining things in town that did not involve the main drag or dogs.

Churchill’s famous Murals were high on the list of things left to see. Concept: Bring together an international team of eighteen recognized public artists from nine countries, three professional photographers, one film maker, and one documentarian. Call the project Seawalls Churchill. Spend a year planning and coordinating. Glitch: Three weeks before the festival, the rail line washed out making it impossible to bring up needed equipment including four lifts, 700 sets of scaffolding, rollers, paint brushes, ladders, buckets and 500 cans of spray paint. Happy ending: Rather than scrap the whole thing the residents of Churchill saved the day by matching the artists’ willingness to proceed with their own willingness to donate equipment, share supplies, and volunteer endless hours. For 10 days in June of 2017 a project originally focused on ocean health ended up reflecting the characteristic resilience, generosity, and determination of a small Northern community. Sounds like a home run to me. The murals, each unique, are scattered around town. Most are on buildings but we saw one on a shipping container, one on an airplane, and another on a helicopter.

We stopped at a monument in memory of Thanadelthur, the Dene woman credited with the founding of Churchill. We drove to Cape Merry but were not allowed off the bus, because a bear was napping behind the main building. We took advantage of the huge inukshuk on the bay just perfect for pictures and saw a crashed airplane known as Miss Piggy. Our morning ended with a fun presentation by a transplant of 20 years, Claude, who talked about the challenges, tradeoffs, and benefits of living this far north. He came as a meat cutter for HBC but now has a few part-time gigs including one at the airport because it comes with flight benefits as well as a certain poundage of freight each month.

A quick buffet lunch and we were off to catch our chartered plane. On the way to the airport we stopped to see the detention center more commonly referred to as bear jail. Capacity: 27. The former military Quonset hut has a gorgeous sleeping bear mural covering the whole front. We were not allowed in because we’d stress the three inmates, but we saw the bear traps used to capture the offenders, mostly juveniles that refuse to be run out of town. These bears are relocated further north if it’s early in the season and left in jail until the bay freezes if it is late in the season. Rarely do they stay incarcerated for longer than a month. The bears are given water but no food since they are fasting this time of year anyway.

We left Churchill in the snow and landed in Winterpeg in the rain. We transferred to the Fort Gerry Hotel where we relinquished our boots and coats, retrieved our suitcases, and cleaned up for a fabulous farewell dinner and slideshow made up of pictures of our trip.

Oh my gosh, we could not have asked for a better adventure. Fabulous guides who have talked us through everything from the coveted Northwest Passage to famous explorers to insects to the effect of climate change on caribou. The weather has been ideal for us humans with flurries and a couple inches of snow, but unseasonably warm for the bears. Usually male bears come off the tundra and head onto the ice before the females and their cubs arrive. So far there’s no appreciable ice, so this year, lucky us, all the bears have arrived with the females keeping their distance from the oft-times aggressive males. This has been a boon for us to see so many males, females, and cubs.

The last of our daily birthday gifts and cards was doled out to Cleone this morning and we have worn out all the plays on words with bear (unbearable, bear-ly, thank you bear-y much, bearbones, bear minimum …) so all we have left to do is empty our duffels into our suitcases and get a good night’s sleep for our flight home tomorrow. We are told to expect quite a few Swifties headed to Toronto for the Taylor Swift concert.

Thank you, Cleone, for planning a perfect 80th.