This town can’t rely on polar bears to bring in tourism anymore – the canaries of the sea could help

Playful large white whales bring joy to Hudson Bay. Their happy chirps leap out in an environment and economy threatened by the warming water melting sea ice, starving polar bears and changing the entire food chain.

Loud and curious belugas swarm boats here, clicking, nudging and frolicking. At any given summer moment on the Churchill River that flows into the Hudson Bay, as many as 4,000 belugas can be up and down the waterway, surrounding vessels of all sizes. That makes it hard to find a place where you don’t see them, said whale biologist Valeria Vergara, senior scientist at the Raincoast Conservation Foundation. It’s in their nature.

Beluga whales are called the canaries of the sea because scientists say they are some of the most vocal creatures on Earth

“The social butterflies of the whale world… You can see it in Churchill,” Vergara said.

The town of Churchill is counting on that to continue. The mostly Indigenous community, pulled out of economic doldrums by polar bear tourism, faces the prospect of a dwindling number of bears because of climate change. So it is counting on another white beast, the beluga, to come to the rescue and entice summer tourists — if the sea mammals can also survive the changes to this gateway to the Arctic.

There’s something healing about belugas. Just ask Erin Greene.

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Greene was attacked by a polar bear in 2013. She doesn’t like to go into details about the attack, but Mayor Mike Spence said she was thrashed by a bear which had her in its jaws. A neighbor hit the bear with a shovel, and a third person used a truck to scare off the bear, which was later found and killed. Years later, Greene said contact with the sociable whales helped pull her out of post traumatic stress disorder. Now she goes out in the water with them, on a paddleboard, and sings to and with the whales. She also rents paddleboards to tourists, so they can do the same.

Greene, who isn’t native to Churchill but came to work in the tourism industry, tried yoga, which eventually led to paddleboarding in Hawaii. It made her feel a little better, so she thought she’d bring it back to Churchill where there isn’t just water, but belugas. And that…