Erika Commisso had not even left Churchill after her first visit when she knew she would return.

It was October and November 2024, the season when polar bears gather along the coast of Hudson Bay waiting for the sea ice to form. Over five days, she and her fellow travellers saw 83 bears, along with foxes, owls, other birds and an Arctic hare. Yet it was not simply the number of animals that stayed with her. It was the sense of watching an entire Arctic landscape change.

“We arrived in a snow-covered Churchill with beautiful blue skies. Hudson Bay was completely open,” she recalls. “But by our last day, there was ice as far as we could see, and the polar bears were beginning to head out onto the ice for the season.”

The transformation was magical, but it also made her wonder what Churchill would look like at the opposite end of its wildlife calendar. What would it be like to photograph polar bears against green tundra or purple fireweed rather than basalt and permafrost? Could she experience the thousands of belugas that enter western Hudson Bay each summer? And with the right combination of darkness, clear skies and solar activity, might the northern lights complete the picture?

When Erika returned in August, she had those three ambitions in mind. What followed went beyond anything she expected. She experienced polar bears, belugas and the aurora in a single day, not once, but twice.

For a destination usually marketed through three separate seasons, that narrow summer overlap reveals something remarkable about Churchill. It is not simply the Polar Bear Capital of the World (complete with its own polar bear jail), a beluga-watching centre or an aurora borealis destination. For a few weeks each year, it can become all three at once.

It may also be one of the most compelling expedition experiences on Earth, even though no ship is required.

Erika is a US-based expedition sales specialist, owner of Glacial Expeditions (an approved ExplorEarth partner) and the author of a recent live expedition log from East Greenland. She knows the familiar rhythm of expedition cruising: plans changing with the weather, guides scanning for wildlife, Zodiacs launching and travellers learning that nature rather than a printed itinerary ultimately controls the day.

Churchill felt remarkably similar.

“I always say Churchill is a land expedition,” she explains. “You have a home base, whether that’s a lodge, hotel or, in our case, a local B&B. Then you head out each day looking for wildlife and seeing where the day takes you.”

Her group of six travelled in a comfortable van equipped for wildlife viewing and photography. When the search moved onto Hudson Bay and the Churchill River, they transferred into a Zodiac. Guides remained in contact through a WhatsApp group, sending meeting times, plans and wildlife updates that Erika likens to carrying an expedition ship’s announcements in your pocket.

The similarities ran deeper than the equipment. The group ate together, learned constantly from its guides and developed the camaraderie familiar to anyone who has shared an expedition ship. Most importantly, the schedule remained flexible.

“You might head out looking for one thing and discover something completely unexpected,” says Erika. “The guides are constantly making decisions based on the weather, wildlife and conditions.”

Apart from not sleeping on a moving ship, she found the underlying experience almost identical. There were expert guides, education, wildlife searches and the shared sense of exploring rather than following a fixed sightseeing itinerary.

That distinction matters. Expedition travel is often defined by its ships, but Churchill suggests the vessel is only one way to reach an expedition environment. Remoteness, uncertainty, expert interpretation and immersion in the natural world may matter more.

Erika’s extraordinary day began at sunrise along the Hudson Bay coast east of Churchill, near the wreck of the Ithaka. Her group soon found a mother polar bear with two cubs moving along the rocks, relaxed enough to nibble seaweed while the early light caught their fur.

They continued scouting and encountered another mother with two cubs, followed by a third family. Before the group had even set out to look for belugas, it had seen nine polar bears.

For Erika, the cubs were the greatest surprise.

“First of all, they were so pudgy,” she says. “They looked incredibly healthy, and it was wonderful to see that the mothers were healthy as well. And they were absolute little troublemakers.”

She watched one pair for almost two hours as they wrestled, investigated seaweed exposed by the falling tide and climbed over their mother before abruptly falling asleep. In another family, one cub remained close to its mother while its sibling appeared determined to investigate everything around it.

“You couldn’t help but see those little personalities developing. It was simply baby animals being baby animals, but that’s what made it so special.”

The extended observation is important. Wildlife travel is often reduced to whether a species was seen and photographed. Churchill’s greater privilege was time. Instead of a fleeting white shape on distant ice, Erika could watch family behaviour unfold and see individual characteristics emerge.

Polar bears encountered around Churchill in summer are living through a demanding part of their annual cycle. With Hudson Bay free of sea ice, their principal platform for hunting seals has disappeared. Bears spend the ice-free period ashore, conserving energy while they wait for autumn and the return of the ice.

Yet the summer landscape changes how visitors see them. On Erika’s first journey, Churchill had appeared almost monochrome, its snow, pale grasses and grey skies creating the familiar visual language of the polar bear. In August, purple flowers, green tundra, grey rocks and brilliant blue water transformed the setting.

The number of bears was lower than during the peak autumn season, but their presence among the colours of summer revealed a different Arctic.

By mid-morning, the group was travelling through the Hudson Bay and Churchill River system on a three-hour Zodiac excursion. The water was almost completely calm. Belugas began appearing almost immediately.

“As far as you could see, there were little white humps surfacing across the water,” Erika recalls.

Adult belugas are instantly recognisable by their white colouring, but the youngest animals looked markedly different. Newborn calves were small and dark grey, gradually becoming paler as they matured. Erika saw more mothers and calves than she could count, consistently surfacing together.

Some whales came alongside the Zodiac. Others passed beneath it or followed behind. Eventually, the group stopped the boat and ate lunch while belugas continued surfacing around them.

“The mothers and calves stayed incredibly close together,” she says. “For me, those are the moments that make wildlife travel so meaningful. It’s not just about seeing an animal. It’s about having enough time to actually observe behaviour, to watch a mother and her young interact, see personalities emerge and understand a little more about how these animals live.”

July and August bring an immense migration into western Hudson Bay, with thousands of belugas gathering in the region’s warmer, relatively shallow estuaries. Parks Canada estimates that around one-third of the world’s beluga population migrates near Churchill each summer. The whales feed, socialise and moult, rubbing against the riverbed to help shed their outer layer of skin.

For Erika, seeing belugas was not a matter of one lucky encounter. She spotted them every day, sometimes even while standing ashore searching for bears. The uncertainty was not whether whales would appear, but whether there would be a handful or hundreds.

After their time on the water, Erika’s group walked across the tidal flats to the wreck of the Ithaka, stranded east of Churchill since 1960. By evening, they were eating dinner from their vans out on the tundra.

The bears had not finished with them.

Their guides spotted a mother and two cubs swimming. The young bears proved remarkably capable in the water, although their mother occasionally had to intervene when squabbles interrupted their progress toward shore. The group then travelled slowly back along the Hudson Bay coastline through an area locally known as Polar Bear Alley, encountering still more mothers and cubs.

By the end of the day, Erika had seen 14 polar bears.

This abundance is the quality she believes differentiates Churchill from better-known expedition cruise destinations. She has seen polar bears in both Svalbard and Greenland, but neither offered the same concentration of encounters.

Churchill’s wildlife experience is not confined to land. While searching for belugas by Zodiac, Erika also saw multiple bears, including an interaction in which two polar bears chased a third away from an area they had occupied.

“From a wildlife perspective, Churchill absolutely belongs on the expedition cruising map,” she says.

After sunset, the group returned to change clothes and switch camera equipment. Around 9.30 pm, they headed out again, their guides having monitored the cloud and aurora forecasts throughout the day.

The moment Erika stepped from the van, she could see the northern lights with the naked eye.

For the next two hours, the aurora moved across the sky in green, pink, purple and blue. At several points, the light appeared to form a crown directly overhead.

“It was far more impressive than we had expected,” she says. “We were absolutely exhausted by the end of the night, but it was one of those travel days that you know you’re going to remember forever.”

Churchill lies beneath the auroral oval, making it one of the world’s most reliable northern-lights destinations. Yet summer creates an obvious complication: daylight. As August progresses and darkness returns, a brief opportunity emerges. Belugas remain in the estuaries, polar bears can be found along the coast, and the night can become dark enough for the aurora to appear.

The combination sounds almost impossibly fortunate, but Erika experienced it on two consecutive days.

“Once you understand Churchill’s seasons, it’s actually more achievable than you might think,” she says. “It’s not necessarily about getting lucky on one particular day. It’s about giving yourself enough time for nature to line everything up.”

She recommends staying for four or five days rather than trying to compress Churchill into a short stop. More time means more opportunities for different wildlife encounters, changing weather and a clear night sky. Nothing can be guaranteed, but the odds improve when travellers allow the destination to dictate the pace.

As an expedition sales specialist, Erika sees a clear distinction between Churchill and an Arctic expedition cruise. It is not a question of one being better. They offer different ways of experiencing the North.

“The distinction is really concentration versus variety,” she explains.

Churchill provides an intense immersion in particular species. Travellers can spend several days focused on polar bears and belugas, with the possibility of northern lights and encounters with birds, foxes, hares and other wildlife. Erika compares the rhythm to an African safari. From sunrise to sunset, everyone watches, searches, and responds to what is happening around them.

An expedition cruise delivers breadth. The ship moves through changing landscapes and ice conditions, visits remote communities and creates opportunities to encounter a wider range of wildlife. A polar bear sighting may dominate one day, while the next brings a landing, a seabird colony, walruses or a dramatic passage through ice.

For travellers with polar bears or belugas at the top of their wish list, Erika believes Churchill is difficult to surpass. For those seeking a broader exploration of Arctic landscapes, cultures and wildlife, an expedition cruise may be the stronger choice.

The most exciting answer is not to choose between them.

Churchill has begun appearing on a small number of expedition itineraries. In 2025, Hapag-Lloyd Cruises’ Hanseatic Nature completed a pioneering route through Hudson Bay between Greenland and Churchill, while Silversea included Churchill as an embarkation or disembarkation point for Silver Endeavour. The development appeared to position Churchill as an emerging gateway to the Canadian Arctic.

Yet it remains far from a mainstream expedition port, and Erika believes there are practical reasons why.

Most travellers reach the town through Winnipeg, followed by a flight of around two and a half hours, although rail access also exists. Weather can disrupt operations, particularly outside the more reliable summer period. Churchill is a small community with a limited supply of accommodation, vehicles and guiding capacity. Moving a full ship of 100 or 200 passengers is very different from taking six people into the tundra in a photography vehicle.

An expedition ship can launch Zodiacs and offer a superb beluga experience, with the possibility of seeing polar bears from the water. But Erika argues that understanding Churchill’s bears properly means spending time on land. The available vehicles and tundra buggies cannot necessarily absorb an entire ship’s complement simultaneously.

This creates an intriguing tension. Churchill deserves more recognition from expedition cruising, but the characteristics that make it special are intimacy, patience and flexibility. Rapid growth or large passenger movements could undermine the very experience visitors have travelled so far to find.

The answer may not be to turn Churchill into another busy cruise port. It may be to treat it as an expedition in its own right, or an extended pre- or post-experience combined with an expedition cruise. 

For travellers joining or leaving a ship in Churchill, Erika’s advice is unequivocal: do not reduce the destination to a charter flight and a few hours ashore.

“One day in Churchill just isn’t enough,” she says.

She recommends adding four or five days before or after the voyage. That creates time to explore the tundra, search for bears, travel among belugas and wait for the weather to offer a clear night. The land expedition can then lead naturally into a ship-based journey through the Canadian Arctic, Nunavut, Greenland or the Northwest Passage.

“You get the intimacy and flexibility of a land-based wildlife experience, followed by the broader exploration that an expedition ship provides.”

Churchill challenges the assumption that a polar expedition begins when a ship sails. Here, it may start when six people climb into a van before sunrise, when a guide spots movement against the rocks or when a Zodiac falls silent as dark-grey calves surface beside their mothers.

It is found in the uncertainty of the day and in the knowledge that weather and wildlife can overturn every plan. It is found in the camaraderie of a small group eating dinner on the tundra, still scanning the shoreline. And sometimes it continues long after dark, when an already extraordinary day ends beneath a sky coloured green, pink, purple and blue.

Churchill may not look like a conventional expedition. That could be exactly why it is one of the world’s greatest.