CHURCHILL, MB
Along the Hudson Bay in the far northeast corner of Manitoba lies the small town of Churchill, renowned across the globe for its natural beauty and abundance of polar bears. However, the Wildlife Management Society of Manitoba has decided that all the polar bears of northern Manitoba will be tranquillized, loaded onto freight trains, and moved to compounds in southern Manitoba.
“Churchill’s, like, just way too inconvenient,” said Society spokesperson Blair Davies. “I mean we’d get a lot more people showing up to see the bears if we could get them down closer to where the people live and stuff.”
Once they awake from their sleep, the bears will be set free in and around Steinbach, where they will be much closer to tourists and hunters alike.
“It’s about time we did something for the good people in Steinbach,” said Davies. “We figured we’d reward them with thousands of cute, but deadly, predators.”
The hope is that if the polar bears are in a more densely-populated area, they will become better integrated into the community and will assimilate with Manitoba culture.
“The bears have been isolated for so long that they’ve developed their own customs, like eating seals and so on, and we hope that after our extensive polar bear re-education program here in Mennonite country they can once again become sound productive members of the community,” explained Davies.
The Society is also looking into plans to move the Hudson Bay beluga whales to the Red River.