Polar Bear Tours
Churchill, Manitoba, Canada
Employees with Frontiers North Adventures sometimes ride along during polar bear tours just to watch guests’ reactions when they come nose to nose with one.
“It really is awesome; people describe them as majestic animals, and they truly are majestic,” said Tricia Schers, vice president of marketing and sales. “People break down in tears all the time when they see a polar bear up close for the first time.”
People often save for years to make the trek to Churchill, Manitoba, Canada, where they can get close to polar bears in the wild. Frontiers North takes groups either to Cape Churchill in Wapusk National Park (the company is the sole operator in the park) or onto former military trails in the Churchill Wildlife Management Area to experience polar bears in their natural habitat.
No one feeds the bears, calls to the animals or chases them down, Schers said. The tundra buggies, sort of heavy-duty arctic buses, stick to established trails and let the bears come to them. Each buggy holds 40 people, but private group tours are limited to 20 per buggy so everyone gets their own window, Schers said.
The buggies are high enough so the people are safe from the bears and the bears are safe from the people, but close enough that they can look each other in the eyes. People often say the bears look like giant dogs sitting next to the buggy, Schers said, and their behavior is similar. They sniff around, smell guests, bite the tires.
“Polar bears by nature are very curious animals,” she said. “They come over and check it out and come right up to the buggy.”
Frontiers North can customize group experiences, Schers said. The company owns a fleet of tundra buggies, as well as a hotel in Churchill and the “Tundra Buggy Lodge,” which is similar to a train on wheels. Frontiers North hauls the lodge onto the tundra for the season so people can spend days viewing and photographing the bears.
Bay of Fundy
Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada
The city of Saint John sits on the northern side of the Bay of Fundy, a narrow, funnel-shaped bay that separates the Canadian provinces of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia.
The bay boasts one of the world’s highest tidal ranges, if not the highest — there’s some debate — so it’s one of the few places in the world where visitors can walk on the ocean’s floor during low tide, and their footprints are under as much as 50 feet of seawater during high tide. A tidal tower in the New Brunswick Museum lobby is powered by the bay’s water to shows visitors tide levels throughout the day.
The massive tidal shifts create another unique phenomenon in the city: the Reversing Rapids. The Saint John River empties into the Bay of Fundy, but during high tide, the power of the ocean is greater than that of the river, and the incoming tide forces the river to flow backward, creating roiling rapids and whirlpools, said Jillian MacKinnon, manager of marketing and communications for Discover Saint John.
Boat tours take passengers near the Reversing Rapids, which “is a neat vantage point because you can really feel the force of that happening,” she said. Boats can go through the rapids only twice a day during calm “slack tide” periods. Fallsview Park offers views of the phenomenon, and people can even zip over the churning currents on the Saint John Adventures Zipline course.
Saint John was incorporated in 1785, making it Canada’s oldest incorporated city. The historic waterfront Market Square is home to restaurants, boutiques, entertainment, a boardwalk and outdoor cafe seating around a central fountain.
The Saint John City Market “is a must stop for everybody,” MacKinnon said. The market dates to the city’s founding and is Canada’s oldest continuing farmers market. Built on a hill in 1876, the current market building is packed with vendors peddling meat, fish, produce, flowers, art and jewelry, as well as a wide variety of international foods.
