I went up to Churchill, MB, as a poor backpacker by VIA Rail from Winnipeg at Xmas in 2001. I stayed in a nice little basic hotel, and got to meet Brian Ladoon, who's an artist & entrepreneurial kind of guy who raises Canadian Eskimo Dogs there, and who also looks after polar bears who are hanging around waiting for Hudson's Bay to freeze over in the fall/winter, which is when they're hungrily scrounging around in the town's trash dump, both unfortunately and dangerously. Anyhow, Brian was an intriguing guy to meet. He took me out with some of his Blackfoot (Blackfeet?) First Nations guys to go check on his dogs out on the ice, and to feed them whole frozen chickens which we chopped in halves with axes and applied whatever medications a particular dog might need before throwing the chicken halves to them, which they devoured (and guarded!) voraciously. I loved watching the Northern Lights every night in the deep cold calmness and clear skies up there. It's a very different and beautiful world up there, but it wasn't prohibitively expensive for me as a backpacker, although grocery prices were much higher.
