Winnipeg Day 2

After breakfast in the hotel, we set off at 8 am for our tour of Winnipeg. Winnipeg is a city of approximately 725,000 people and the city had its heyday in the mid-1800s, when it served as a center for trade. Initially, the trade was between the native people and French explorers. Their offspring, known as the Metis, played a large role in the history of the area. The Hudson Bay Company then came into the region and the area boomed, with the main industry being the shipping of pelts of the beaver, snow fox, caribou, and buffalo that once were plentiful in this area. Apparently beaver hats were all the rage in Europe. Many of the city’s buildings were built in the Chicago style, as they were built when Chicago was rebuilding after the great fire there.

Our first stop was the Legislative Building, which is built of Tyndall stone. This is limestone that formed when the area was at the bottom of a warm sea and contains fossil remains that are 445 million years old. Throughout the building’s walls, you can see fossilized shells, corals and sponges. The building has a rotunda with a beautiful ceiling. The building was built by a Freemason and has lots of symbolism that would inspire another Dan Brown novel. It is topped by the “Golden Boy,” a guilt statue that was a gift from France in the 1800s.

Next, we headed off to the Nunavut Gallery, which features Inuit and Native carvings. We learned about the different stones used in these carvings. These Native artists live north of Churchill and transport the carvings 7 hours by boat to sell them.
The Museum of Natural History provided a nice overview of the history of the area, starting with the time when Giant Sloth roamed the land. There is a skeleton of a giant sloth that rivals some of the dinosaurs in size. We saw our first polar bear! Well, okay, it was a stuffed one in the museum… but it was a polar bear. The museum has some lovely native beaded outfits from the time that trade started with the Hudson Bay Company, as well as other items which would have been traded with the local people. The museum features a full sized replica of the type of boat that the Hudson Bay Company would have used. The boat is amazingly small (considering it made trans-Atlantic journeys) and was staffed by only about a dozen crew members, who made the 3 month journey from Europe for trade. We saw some of the traditional Inuit tools and toys and learned about how they made their igloos.

After lunch in a restaurant in the French Quarter, we went to St. Boniface for a brief look around and then back to the museum for a Planetarium program on the Aurora Borealis and stars in the Northern Sky. Next, we saw polar bears… well, okay, they were painted ones that are in a park behind the Legislative Building. Finally, we saw a piece of the original wall of the Fort that was here. Now, it is pitch black and we are back at the hotel. Tonight, we have a welcome dinner in the hotel and tomorrow we leave for Churchill, which is about 800 miles to the north on the shore of Hudson Bay. There are three ways to get to Churchill – by plane, by train (36 hours), or by boat. There are no roads that lead into Churchill. We will be traveling by plane, of course.


Today’s trivia: All of the water from this area drains to the north into the Hudson Bay. Today’s high in Churchill is -4 degrees Celsius and the low is -12 degrees Celsius. Brrr…

Photos:
Polar Bear Sighting!!
Manitoba Legislative Building