Just beyond civilisation on Canada's Arctic edge

“You’re out here on as good a day as you’ll ever get,” yells the guide as he throttles the engine of our inflatable boat and steers us towards the mouth of the river. Decked out in a black wetsuit and snorkelling gear, I sit on the edge of the speeding vessel like a special operations frogman, riding the swells and gazing out at Hudson Bay. In the distance, countless white shapes break the surface and disappear beneath the dark blue water. The guide slows the boat, pulls off his reflector shades and crouches down and looks me straight in the eye (while tweaking his moustache for added emphasis). “We’ve come across a mother lode,” he says. “There are at least 200 beluga whales just off starboard.” In seconds I'm in the frigid water holding onto a towrope and staring into the murky Leviathan depths. Pale blurs soon become visible in the distance. Then, without warning, the phantom-like whales appear directly beneath me, turning sideways to gaze up with their grinning, benevolent expressions of stoic curiosity. The belugas appear with remarkable clarity up-close and sometimes approach in groups of three or four, coming as close as a few metres away. The water is filled with whale chatter: a mixture of bird-like chirping noises and bursts of sound not unlike short-wave radio static. It is a surreal and moving experience. Every summer about 3,000 belugas enter the Churchill River, which flows out of northern Manitoba, Canada, and into Hudson Bay. The animals spend time in the relatively warm waters from June until August to feed, give birth and raise their young. I've travelled to the adjacent town of Churchill to see this wonder first-hand and to explore a place known for its eclecticism, quirkiness and nearby natural wonders. Churchill is Canada's principal Arctic-area seaport, located on the western shores of Hudson Bay. This sub-Arctic hamlet, in which no road leads in or out, has a population of just 1,000 souls. It bills itself as both the beluga whale and polar bear capital of the world; if that isn't enough, it's also a self-described birdwatching paradise and the best place on the planet to view the aurora borealis, otherwise known as the northern lights. I dispensed with the easier option of flying into Churchill and opted instead to travel two days by train along the 1,700-kilometre route from the city of Winnipeg. Sky-blanketed prairies and intermittent fields of yellow canola gave way to boggy, spruce-dominated boreal forests and, later, to the balding, thawing, permafrost-laden tundra from which Churchill emerged like a northern mirage. I have a fascination with remote places, so I had always wanted to visit Churchill. I was doubly enamoured by the prospect after seeing Peter Mettler’s 1994 documentary, Picture of Light. The film, a poetic and philosophical meditation on Churchill and the northern lights, describes the town as “a meeting place of edges: ocean and land, Indian and Inuit, trees and tundra – the real north and the uncivilised south.”The area has been home to Inuit and pre-Inuit peoples for several thousand years, but Churchill’s contemporary beginnings lay in colonial Europe’s quest for empire and resources. The first foreigners arrived in the region when an ill-fated Danish expedition to find the Northwest Passage, led by Jens Muncks, wintered on the site of modern day Churchill in 1619-20. Only three of the 69 expedition members, including Muncks, survived the bleak conditions and unexpectedly harsh winter.In 1717, England’s Hudson’s Bay Company built the first permanent settlement near the mouth of the Churchill River. This remote and battered outpost, manned by hardy overseas adventurers, was one of Britain’s largest fur trading stations in North America. Access to the Atlantic and to an interminable river and lake system stretching south and west, made the area an ideal base for Britain to extend its influence across the frontier. The Hudson’s Bay Company’s Prince of Wales Fort, which was conquered briefly by the rival French in 1782, and whose stalwart, renovated remains can still be visited today, took more than 40 years to build. From / The National