Churchill in winter: What to do with no polar bears in town

Manitoba – It was pushing minus 30C when I dined at Dan’s Diner a pop-up restaurant on the edge of the frozen Churchill River. The heated Tundra Buggy, we sat in boasted panoramic windows and skylights for viewing the northern lights, but I was there for the food and the storytelling.

Métis chef Yves Page prepared the dinner of; potato-leek-parsnip soup, dried caribou, candied arctic char, and bannock with jams and jellies made from local berries. Local Florence Hamilton told us about her Sayisi Dene ancestors, a nomadic tribe who hunted caribou and trapped in this area. Our meal which chef Page called ‘From This Land’ was what those ancestors might have eaten: dried meat combined with caribou fat was an essential portable meal. When there was no caribou, people fished for Arctic char. Hamilton now prefers her dried meat with avocado.

“We’ll never go back to the way our people lived,” she said, “but there’s teachings, there’s knowledge, that we can learn and apply to our lives and prosper.”