My Travels Around the World

Tag: Canada

Churchill, Canada – Baby Beluga in the Deep Blue Sea

July 10-14, 2022

If you or your children are of a certain age, you know all the words to Raffi’s song, Baby Beluga.

Baby beluga in the deep blue sea
Swim so wild and you swim so free
Heaven above and the sea below
And a little white whale on the go
You’re just a little white whale on the go

Well, my friend Ruthi and I got to see baby beluga along with a few thousand of his/her family and friends.

We traveled to Churchill, Canada with Natural Habitat (nathab.com), a company devoted to travel and conservation. If you follow my blog, you know that I’ve traveled with them quite a bit. And if you follow my blog closely, you will recall that I’ve been to Churchill once before. In fact, there are three reasons one visits Churchill, a town of about 900 people in the arctic along Hudson Bay. The first is in January-February when you are very likely to see the aurora borealis (that’s what my other Churchill post is about). In October-November, you go to see polar bears as they migrate over the ice on frozen Hudson Bay. And in the summer, you go to see beluga whales who swarm into Hudson Bay – approximately 3500 of them. And so that’s just what we did in July 2022.

Aurora Borealis

February 18-21, 2019

Seeing the Aurora Borealis, also called the Northern Lights, was on my bucket list for a long time. We finally got to plan a trip to Churchill, Canada (please see that post).  We traveled with Natural Habitat so they could guide us and teach us and feed us and take care of us.

Why Churchill?  Well, so many of our friends had traveled to Norway or Iceland and never got to see the lights. Churchill has one of the highest probabilities of seeing them. Churchill has over 300 nights a year of aurora activity due to its northern latitude and because it sits in the auroral oval (see below to learn what that is). The skies tend to be clear between January and March because moisture is trapped on the frozen Hudson Bay.  Less moisture means it is colder and clearer. So Churchill it was.

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