Yesterday was our last day in Churchill. We did a bit of
shopping and some more looking around. I carried a canister of bear-spray when
I went out walking alone. In the afternoon, a couple of colleagues and I
toured the Churchill Northern Studies Centre, east of
Churchill near the buggy launch-site.
The centerpiece of the Churchill Northern Studies Centre is the
main building, which is built to LEED sustainable standards.
It houses labs, offices, dormitory rooms, and a cafeteria to support
researchers and students working on Arctic ecosystems. They also have capacity
to host conferences of 50 participants comfortably, and up to 75 with a little
squeezing. A great feature of the Center is a clear-plastic dome at the top for
viewing the Northern Lights. Perched at the top of a spiral staircase and
comfortably holding three or four adults, the dome offers a panoramic view of
the area during the day and the Northern Lights on clear nights. Perhaps
most interesting are the acoustics. If someone speaks to the margin of the
dome, the sound travels the circumference and it sounds as though the person is
just beside your ear. You can hear similar acoustics in the Whispering Gallery at
the base of the dome in St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. As everywhere in the
Churchill area, we had to be very careful and watch for bears when walking
outside.
In the early evening we said our goodbyes to the staff of Polar Bears International. Our flight to
Winnipeg was delayed for almost three hours and we took off after 9:00 PM.
Strong headwinds and a turboprop aircraft meant we didn’t reach Winnipeg until midnight,
and I didn’t get to sleep in the hotel until 1:30 this morning. At 5:30 it
was back to the airport for my flight from Winnipeg to Minneapolis, and then on
to Atlanta and back to Melbourne. The excursion was well worth it from the
standpoint of reaching out to K–12 audiences about the global issue of climate
change, and of course the polar bears were absolutely spectacular.
-Rich
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