Loooong Story About The Economy In The North

Seeing that he does not have my full attention, Buchanan takes a sideways step and blocks my view. I am no longer listening. On my toes, I look over Buchanan's shoulder and see that one of the bears has stepped back. It takes a wild swing and slaps the other animal on the side of the head. Buchanan turns, but only for a moment. He won't stop talking. The bear that's been hit is on its keister. His attacker pounces. Now both bears are swinging like a couple of well-matched boxers in the final moments of a fight. A few feet away John Gunter, marketing director of Frontiers North, the tundra buggy/adventure-tour company that brought Buchanan and me out here, is smiling. He's seen Buchanan on the polar bear pulpit many times and evidently enjoys it. He's also enjoying the show the bears are putting on because he knows the tourists in the tundra buggy coming our way will go home happy. Churchill, Man., a closely knit community of Inuit, Cree and non-natives, has had a long, economically troubled history. Polar bears, Polar Bear International and adventure tour companies like Frontiers North have been the only steady sources of good news here. Each fall, when the polar bears congregate east of town to step on that first patch of ice on Hudson Bay, thousands of people from around the world pay big bucks to watch them. No other place can offer an experience like this. But now, residents of Churchill are counting on something else to bring them year-round prosperity. Not all, but many of them, are hoping climate change will melt enough ice in Hudson Bay so their small grain port can become a transportation hub. Far-fetched as that may have seemed 10 years ago, there's reason for their optimism. A few days earlier, the Russian government proposed using seven of its icebreakers to keep the "Arctic bridge" between North America and Eurasia open. If that happened, Churchill's port could operate all year. "I know it sounds strange because melting sea ice could drive the polar bears away from here," Mike Spence, Churchill's longtime mayor, told me over dinner that evening. "But a lot of people also think that's going to happen anyway. So they see a year-round port as the salvation they've been looking for." (5 more pages) http://www.canada.com/edmontonjournal/news/story.html?id=9bb01b79-3b5c-4051-9815-94a6013baaf1&k=62181

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