Scenes from Northern Summers (2)
January 26, 2010
East of Halfway Point, Pete Fenton of the ROM keeps watch for bears.
Ponds on the quartzite, with the town of Churchill in the distance
Street scene in Churchill a few years ago
A cannon at the Cape Merry Battery, where the Hudson's Bay Company men waited, and watched, and waited for the French to come. But they weren't very happy when that finally happened.
Fossils of the Silurian brachiopod (lamp shell), Virgiana decussata, cover the surface of a block on the shore east of Halfway Point.
Sand on the shore east of Churchill shows fresh prints of gull, overlain by Homo sapiens, overlain by Ursus maritimus. Bears like to place things in such a way that you will know who really owns the territory.
Always wanted to visit the polar bear capital. Thanks for posting the pics. Too bad you didn’t find any more of those 28″ long trilobites that are in the area.
Actually, we did find that trilobite. I’ll have to write a piece about that some time …
Just a comment:
I spent a summer up north years ago, and there were these horribly nasty little critters that the locals called “black flies”. If a more terrible creature inhabited this planet, I have never seen it!
The things were like micro-vampires… sucking your blood. As to the voraciousness of the evil things; the nasty buggers were sitting on the cap of a bottle of DEET… eating the stuff!
They’re still there, and still just as nasty. What I hate most about blackflies is that they will crawl into your ears, and when there are clouds of them you find yourself inhaling the little blighters.