By train to Hudson Bay | DW Documentary

The Canadian province of Manitoba has Arctic tundra that stretches to the horizon. Here by the Hudson Bay, the Inuit people have felt a profound connection to polar bears since time immemorial. It's the advent of autumn, and vast swathes of forest are tinged by golden hues. At the First Nations' reserves, the train service is of vital importance. So are the leaders committed to protecting it. Further south of Manitoba, fields and prairies. Canada's indigenous peoples see hunting as an intrinsic part of their culture. Welcome to a very special railway journey, where passengers enjoy landscapes rich in natural and human heritage. We'll be travelling the length of Manitoba, first from Winnipeg in the south, up to Thompson. From here, the train is the only way to venture further north, another 1,700 kilometres, until we reach Churchill by Hudson Bay. Winnipeg, the provincial capital and home to Canadians with all different backgrounds. Immigrants and their descendants, as well as indigenous peoples. Numbering over three quarters of a million people, they make up more than half the population of Manitoba. And those figures are set to rise. Winnipeg's multicultural diversity is reflected in over 600 murals. A number of them were crafted by Peter Thomas. His preferred motifs are the animals of his homeland. Peter is Cree, one of the biggest First Nations groups in Manitoba. My family, we grew up eating wild animals. Hunting was a way of survival and still is for a lot of indigenous people. So what I'm painting here is geese, because geese, they were a way for me to eat as a youth. I have geese tattooed on my arm here. But also, geese represent community and strength together. Because when the geese fly in a shape like this, what they're doing is supporting each other from the wind, from their wings, and they take turns being in front, and that there is no one leader, I think is one of the things lost today with a lot of community. Coming from the reserve to Winnipeg, it was a big adjustment. It was really challenging. One of the areas that we lived in was this neighborhood, and it was the indigenous art, cultural things. That made me feel like I was at home here because of that art. This former downtown department store belonged to the Hudson's Bay Company, set up by its then British owners in the 17th century to control the fur trade in Manitoba. European colonialism led to enormous suffering for First Nations people. Peter Thomas' animals serve as a reminder of the land's original inhabitants. The city of Winnipeg was founded at the forks of the Assiniboine and Red Rivers, a place that is now both a popular meeting place and a site of remembrance. Indigenous people have been gathering here where the rivers meet. The rivers was a main way of traveling by canoe. The forks area was used for trading. So knowing that my ancestors have been here and that I am still here, I think it's a story, an ongoing story of resilience and survival. The word Winnipeg derives from a Cree word. The Cree word is win-nipi. Nipi is water and win is mud, and there's a lot of mud underneath the water. This is one of 16 skateboard parks in Winnipeg. It's a popular sport amongst Indigenous youth. Skateboarding was able to teach me how to be resilient. You know, you fall down to get back up until you get something. Doing that for me as an Indigenous person really helped me get through a lot of things in my life. Language, the colour of your skin, your culture, none of that matters. There's always going to be support in the skateboarding community in the same way that geese support each other in their flight, that sense of community, it's the same thing with skateboarding. I can go anywhere in the world as a skateboarder and be accepted just because I skateboard. It's not a coincidence that the Canadian Museum for Human Rights and the Tower of Hope are located in the forks. Directly adjacent, Union Station. It's a reminder of the time when Winnipeg was the gateway to the West for the colonialists and a destination for thousands of immigrants in the 20th century. Today, the Via Rail Company operates just six passenger train departures per week. Two of them are headed for Hudson Bay. While the train's service manager checks the supplies for the 45-hour journey, new passengers are personally welcomed on board. Hello, bonjour, how are you? Hello, bonjour. Anywhere on the left? Engineer 693, SM693. Via train 693 is closed and secured, ready for departure, Winnipeg. Out. Closed and secured, ready for departure, Winnipeg. Is that correct? That is correct. Every train trip is different. A nice, smooth trip would be a great job, but if something comes up, we will take care of it. It's not the smoothest start. The train is waiting for the green light to proceed. A lengthy freight train pushing its way through the city is blocking their departure. There's a challenge, I guess. We share the track with a freight company. Actually, they own the company and we're on their tracks, so we have to wait until their freight train is clear, and that happens quite often. Sometimes ten minutes, sometimes an hour. Some of the challenge is definitely with freight traffic to be on our way. Nearly an hour later, the train sets off. Looking forward to this trip for two days and two nights are Grant, Ryan and Molly. I'm volunteering up at the Churchill Northern Study Centre for two weeks. I would absolutely love to see a polar bear while I'm up there. I'm really, really interested, like I said, in Arctic conservation, so that would be a dream come true for me. I've taken some time off from my job. I'm really excited to see the Northern Lights, 100%. The train nerd in me loves it because all this stuff is antique. All these rail cars are from the 1950s. You don't see dome cars like this hardly anywhere in the world anymore. There's a lot of freight traffic, with trains backed up a good couple of kilometres, all crossing the vast expanses of Canada, from Vancouver to Toronto. The passenger train has to give way. Grant and his fellow train spotters in the dome car have their sights set on the White Gateway. As the train goes through at speed, it's taking picture after picture after picture after picture after picture, and there's AI, artificial intelligence, to evaluate, to look at the pictures that's coming through and saying, is there something wrong with this car? Is there a door open on this container? It's a safety, an operational safety device. That's really what it is. I've read about it, but I've never actually seen one in real life. So yeah, that's actually pretty cool. I'm a little bit of a nerd when it comes to stuff like that. Hi there. Hello. Going to Churchill? Yes. Natalie Marcoux is checking tickets. I am counting the tickets. I will radio the engineer and then let him know where the passengers are getting off. We have about five different stops, and some are going all the way to Churchill. So all these towns are scheduled time, but some we only stop if there's a request for it, because they're very tiny towns, they're not very big. Portage-la-Prairie is home to a community of the Red River Metis people, with representatives including Will Gooden. The Metis are a distinct indigenous group, tracing their roots back to mixed First Nations and European ancestry. There was these mixed marriages. The fur traders from France, from Scotland, but then the fathers would go back to France, or they would go back to Scotland. And these families were left to fend for themselves. And then the First Nations communities, where the mothers came from, would kind of push them to the edges as well. So there was this non-acceptance from both peoples. This idea of a nation started happening because these families started to live together. Soon there became the culture. They would start playing the fiddle and start doing the dances. There is a lot of Scottish and French elements in the music, but there's also, in the background, you can hear the echo of the drum from the First Nations culture as well. The prairie has been accessible by rail since 1886, when the Metis used to hunt buffalo. Bison are now a protected species in Canada. Most of them roam the Riding Mountain National Park. Every time I see buffalo, bison, it gives me a feeling of connection to my ancestors. My brain takes me back 200 years, and I can see the thousands of bison, buffalo, grazing on the grass. Yeah, no, that was very cool. My dad has gone buffalo hunting in the past. The buffalo hunts that were quite large, there were sometimes hundreds or more people would go out, and everybody had a job. And the buffalo, it made us a community, it made us a nation. For the Metis, hunting is a way of life. Will has inherited this land, where he's hunting ducks, or trying to. One of the things that we had to fight for is the right to hunt. We had to go to the Supreme Court. In fact, I was charged and taken to court for hunting on this lake here. Here we got one, big Canada goose. And now we have that right, and it's something that our people celebrate all the time. Yeah, so that's excellent. Yeah, right on. He just was in the wrong place at the wrong time. One shot, one bird. I impressed myself. There's more ducks flying. I think this might be the first goose I've shot up here. Usually they're on the prairies, in the fields. And there are signs of other animals, too. The beaver goes back and forth. This is his run here. He's done this over many years. This is where he sits, and he feeds, and then he'll swim. That's why he makes a deep canal. He'll swim into the next lake here. The beaver is important for Canada. We're looking at the seal here of Manitoba, and obviously it's at the very top. When I was a young boy, that was one of the first things my dad taught me. We would go over here to some of the lakes, trap beaver. But now the furs are not as in high demand, and the prices are low, and when prices are low, it's not worth it to come out in traps. The land also includes a small lodge, a treasured haven for generations, where his Metis roots are on display. This place is very special to me because my grandparents lived here and my father lived here. My father is straight up above me, and also my grandparents are up on the wall over there. So yeah, I'm proud of my family and proud to be Metis. It's very important for me to pass on to my kids. This is Metis fried bread. Today, it's eaten with wild goose breast. Yeah, monkey. Good job, monkey. Geese are special to many people in Canada besides the Indigenous nations. It's a Canadian goose is what this one was, yeah. The Canada goose is known for flying great distances. They go way up north to Churchill where they actually nest, and then they fly all the way down into the United States, long distances that they travel. So the goose is a Canadian symbol. A little goose sandwich. Mm-hmm, it all comes together, yeah. The fried bread and the goose meat and where we are, it's all a wonderful day, yeah. While the geese set off for warmer climates, our train continues its journey north. A lone coyote roams the prairies. These seemingly endless grasslands are largely used as farmland today. It goes for miles. It's amazing to see it and just so wide. I had a lot of people that said, oh, you're going to be on a train for 45 hours. Have you thought about the choices you've made in your life? But it's just nice and peaceful. It's the same thing over and over, and it's slow. It's not changing. I have a different view. I think it's interesting and mesmerizing in its own way. I think it's boring. No, I don't think it's boring. I'm an ecologist, so I love the land anyway, and I really like, yeah, to see the animals. I like it. The journey to Hudson Bay continues as nightfall descends. The on-board crew works around the clock, but Natalie is taking a break. I bring my own food because we live on the train for five days. We work 18-hour days per day, and I like to be healthy, to stay strong, because we don't have a lot of sleep, so they're long hours. This is actually from my garden, so I grew all of this. When we come on the train, we have to leave everything, right? You have to leave your family and responsibilities, and then you have a new life. So for five days, we are immersed in this world. Everything good? All right. We have our little family on the train. We call them, you know, our co-workers, and we live together, and we work as a team. Here you are. You're welcome. It's bedtime. Just a bit tired from traveling a whole day, and I'm ready to go to bed. This is the most comfortable bed I've ever slept in on a train. It's great to go to bed, and then many hours later, it's new scenery. It's always a game of guessing as to where I actually am. Nothing. It's just plaque. Welcome to Wabowden. It's time for a fresh air break. Thank you. The first stop after dawn is this tiny community. There's not much to explore except the surrounding forests, but there's no time. All aboard! All right, guys. Keep going. All aboard. Here we go. Let's wake them up. Yeah, we got to go fast, guys. Yeah. Get some good photos. There's a freight train coming, and we don't want to be stuck behind it. So we'll be late if we are, or maybe once crossing, I'm not too sure which direction. But that's why we have to go, so we don't get stuck. All aboard. They are referring to a train operated by the rival Hudson Bay Railway, a private company that services remote locations. Now we're leaving east to west line and heading north. On a single-line track, it's important the passenger train doesn't encounter a freight train. It's a big country, so you can't only do so much track. It's very expensive to maintain track up here as well because the land is very unstable. We're always the same size, about five cars. Freight trains can be much longer, so depending on who can fit in the siding. So mostly they get the priority. It's just a way of life up here, and that's, you know, like, you have to do with what you have. Autumnal larch trees add some color to the coniferous forests. One of many sights for nature lovers. Bald eagles are on the lookout for prey, above the myriad rivers and lakes branching off from Hudson Bay. Ryan hosts a children's quiz show on Canadian TV. He's workshopping questions about Grass River, which, despite its scenic waterfalls, was once an important trade route. I'm lucky enough to make a travel journey like this, that I integrate some local flavor into the questions, and these questions will go Canada-wide. So we could have a question like, the Grass River, it's not commonly used for free transport because it replaced by what mode of transportation, and the answer would be the railroad. Or we could say something like the railroad replaced the freight route that would have ended in Hudson Bay, but started in what river? In Manitoba. Good afternoon, everyone. May I have your attention please? We will be arriving at Thompson Station in approximately 20 minutes. It's on the right side of the freight train. We'll be parked there in the siding as we go by. This time, the freight train gave way. Thompson is the last place on our route that can be reached by road. Many people come here to stock up on supplies. Betsy Kennedy is a First Nations chief. Hello. Come to look for a jacket. Her reserve is located further north. She came by train for this shopping trip. Oh my God, this is nice. We don't have a store like this in our community. We don't have winter jackets. I like this one. The Via Rail train from Winnipeg is the only transportation option to her reserve. In order to make the four and a half hour journey each way worthwhile, she also stocks up on food. Train is late, eh? Yeah, it's very late. Sometimes it's not bad right now, but we had to wait until two o'clock in the morning for it to leave. And sometimes there's a lot more people on, that it gets really frustrating. I stopped the train. They sold all the tickets to tourists. We couldn't get on because there was no more room. So we told them, well, let us on, otherwise you're not going to get past Ilford. And that's what we did, sometimes. The train is also part of Betsy's heritage. Oh, it's coming. There it is. That's where we used to live. I was born along the railway. And I've been on the railway since I was a baby. And my dad and my grandfather and my uncles all worked on the railway. Oh, look at this. Oh my goodness. There was tanker cars that tipped over. And they said there must have been a soft spot because it's all muskeg in this area. And there's not enough rock on the bottom there, so it sinks all the time, and they have to keep filling it up regularly. In 2017, severe flooding damaged multiple sections of track. The vital railway to Hudson Bay was suspended for 18 months, so the First Nations communities took charge. Oh my goodness. This is where all the washout happened. It was devastating. And we were a bit shocked by what happened. And then we told them that we have to get the train going. We wanted all the communities along the bay line to have some ownership and to have a say in what we would like. It was challenging. And it was my dad, he said, I want the Indians to own this railway. So, First Nations people to own the railway. So it was quite exciting. We joined her the next morning around her reserve. Home to just 200 people, Ilford is one of the smallest First Nations communities to have a financial stake in the Hudson Bay railway purchase. The reserve also owns this administrative building, which includes an office for the chief. Netherlands. My goodness. Hello. We've had Wi-Fi not too long ago. Yes. It was hard by phone, so now we either have the phones or the internet. Oh, really? My father. My grandfather. He worked hard for the community because he had to get our reserve started. And so he had to get land and he only spoke our language. But can you imagine that the prime minister speaks French and my grandfather speaks Cree, so they both had to have interpreters. The reserve also includes a number of lakes that the First Nation community depends on to continue the traditional ways of life begun by their ancestors. Today, Betsy is going pike fishing with her grandson and daughter. My goodness. Oh. Oh, you got a little band. Hold still. Oh, my goodness. Oh. Yeah, this is a good fishing spot. It's a little bigger than mine. Got to get another one. Got to put them back. Put them back. If they're small, then you won't be able to get as much meat from the fish. Oh, that is... No, it's a small one. But... Ah! Boy, these small ones fight hard. Oh, I need pliers. What do you think? Should we keep them? Yeah, we should keep them. We kind of pulled out the gills when we were taking out the hook. So we're going to keep it. If you take care of the animals and the fish, especially what we're doing now, throwing back the small ones so they can get bigger, at least this way we'll be able to catch them and they'll feed us later. So we can get them next year. I guess it's part of my culture to respect the land and to respect nature. I don't mind being out with the nature. It's fun. That's one of the reasons why we really protect the land when we're here. I love going out fishing, love going out hunting, living on the reserve. I don't see myself anywhere else. Back near the railway line by Ilford, Betsy and her family cook and eat their catch. Delicious. Under 5 out of 10. 10 out of 10. Yeah, 10 out of 10. Uh-oh, we got visitors. Best thing to come home to is real fish from the lake. I like coming home all the time. I don't like the city. Our trip to Hudson Bay continues, and the second night is one to remember. The northern lights illuminate the night sky. You'll see a little bit of the aurora with the sunrise. Oh, that's so cool. That was a little bit shaky. It's significantly better than the black square I got last night on my smartphone, so that's okay though. You don't want to be sleeping all the time because it's nice to get the pictures at night. Yeah, exactly. You don't want to sleep at all on this train just because it's so spectacular. You don't want to miss anything, right? As the journey nears its conclusion, the landscape has changed once again overnight. Mali is enchanted by the Arctic tundra. I'm getting so excited. I can't believe I'm finally here. I've been hoping to come to Churchill for so many years, and now I'm finally here. I'm so excited. What day are we today? Churchill. Thursday. I studied geography at university, so coming up to Churchill, because the Arctic is such a fragile environment and we are the ones that are harming the environment and making it decline, and so I really hope that I can be part of the solution to hopefully reverse that trajectory. Since the train is unable to turn around in Churchill, it has to cover the last few kilometres in reverse. It's time for some people to say goodbye. But for others, the adventure is only just beginning here in what's referred to as the Polar Bear Capital of the World. Have a good day at Churchill. Mali and her family are excited Mali is a volunteer for the Northern Studies Centre, and she's counting on seeing some polar bears. The same train will head back in the evening. For Natalie and the crew, that means another 45 hours aboard their mobile workspaces. I don't even think about being tired. You just keep going. That's the Via Spirit. Just keep going. Don't think about it. So what happened to those freight trains that were threatening to interrupt the journey for service manager Mario? There was two trains out there that we were going around, and one of them, yeah, it made it. It was here before us. It wasn't in our way. 45 minutes late into Churchill here. The speed is nice and slow and easy up here. So, again, like I said, it's a way of life. Everything is good. All safe and sound and in Churchill. Those other locomotives are already back in action, headed for the docks right by Hudson Bay, where grain and other supplies are stored. Nothing is shipped. Right now, it is transported on freight trains that 900 residents also depend on completely. Just heading out to L5 and D20. Something else they depend on is the polar bear police. Usually, the only bears Chantal McLean sees on patrol today are in murals. But things can get hairy quickly. When I'm sound asleep at four in the morning and the bear phone rings, there's a bear trying to get into my house. Those moments, you go from sound asleep to full adrenaline in a matter of moments. In the truck, shooting a scare pistol out the window, trying to get this 800-pound bear off of someone's window when it's trying to break in. So, there's several moments that have been high stress. Right now, we're driving through an area called The Flats. This is a popular spot for bears, and we're looking for any signs of polar bears. Anything that's been knocked over, any food attractants that are out, or, of course, the polar bears themselves. Right now, we're just checking to see if there's any bears swimming in there, heading towards town. Leroy Whitmore grew up in Church Hill. He's an expert on polar bears and their behavior. He's also an experienced tracker. Looks like a big male went through here a few days ago. Some fresh prints through the mud. If you look really close at a bear when they walk, it's almost like they clip their front paws, and they'll step exactly where the front paws were. So, it looks like just the two sets, but there's actually four. Never follow footprints. There could be a lot of other bears hiding around here in the rocks and the willows. When fall arrives, polar bears gather in greater numbers in Hudson Bay. They wait for the ice to form, which they use to hunt seals. That's when Chantal must be particularly extra vigilant. The most dangerous situation I've experienced is when the bear is not scared or is not intimidated by noise deterrence. So, we use our shotguns all the time, and we always use cracker shells. This is one of our polar bear traps right here that's baited with seal meat. We do have live trail cams on the other side of the trap, so we can always check on it. We only put bears in our holding facility when they're food-conditioned, and they're going to get into a negative human interaction. And then we're going to relocate that bear with the helicopter to the north of Churchill. This is the direction that the bears are naturally trying to go in the fall. We keep bears with us for 30 days. The idea is we want to break the chain of thought that the bear has that is associating humans with food. So, when we keep them in our facility, we do not feed them. At that point, they're living off their body fat anyhow. The release of this polar bear this morning, this is the first time in known history that it's a female conservation officer and a female helicopter pilot. Really proud of that. Word has spread fast about a bear being released from the compound. It's exciting news for locals and tourists alike. It's great. I've never seen a bear go airborne in my life. I think it was really fascinating to watch this event that's going on. It's not something I would see back home in the bigger city where I live. So, I got both of them on Ikea uniforms. I wanted to see the rose, and we got them on the train. And then I wanted to see a polar bear. So, both things checked off my list. It's been a great trip. It's been fantastic. These bears lounging around in the tundra are not under anesthesia. They're conserving their energy before hunting season begins. Leroy Whitmore feels a deep connection with polar bears that he traces back to his Inuit roots. Well, for the shaman, it was a friend. The spirit of the polar bear would help the shaman, whether to communicate with somebody in long distance, or if they wanted good hunting, the shaman would speak to the bear, and the bear would help. This bear I come across last summer, it was 28 degrees out, beautiful sunset, and I noticed four paws and a snout sticking out of the water. The bear started to swim toward me, so I started to sing an Inuit ya-ya song. So I did that for about 10 minutes, and the bear just was like, locked eyes with me, and it was quite the moment. The vast tundra can make it hard to get one's bearings. The Inuit had their own ways of navigation, which included building stone signposts. It's like a post-it on a very scarce landscape, you know, an ancient post-it, messages from the past. This particular Inukshuk was made to resemble a human. There's very little landmarks that you can use to determine where you are. Some Inukshuks will have a hole in the middle, so you would look through it, and it would tell you the direction that you need to travel in. And it does feel like there is a sense of magic to the place of Churchill, the sense of the last frontier almost. I love living in Churchill. I've been here my whole life, almost 50 years now, and even if I did go away, Churchill would always be on my mind. Our train journey to Hudson Bay comes to a memorable end. Anyone who's visited Churchill will remember not just the polar bears, but also the sheer vastness of the landscape, with the northern lights dancing above. A traditional Inuit belief ascribes this stunning phenomenon to their ancestors kicking around walrus skulls in a game of football.