Churchill to suffer without rail service

Business owners and residents of an isolated Manitoba community with some of the Canada’s most prestigious tourist attractions say help is needed following news that their only land link may be cut off until the winter.

Omnitrax, the owners of the Hudson Bay Railway line to Churchill, said Friday that flooding damage to the track is so severe that service is suspended until at least the winter and possibly next spring.

“The whole town is very stressed, very depressed,” said one hospitality worker in Churchill who wouldn’t give her name. “The government needs to step in.” Churchill’s attractions play a big role in luring potential visitors to Manitoba. The first image on Travel Manitoba’s web page is a sea kayaker paddling among a pod of beluga whales on Hudson Bay, and people pay thousands of dollars to get up-close views of polar bears at various times of the year.

In 2010, household style maven Martha Stewart visited Churchill and tweeted pictures of her upclose view of a polar bear when she visited the town.

“Believe it or not, northern Manitoba and Churchill are exotic locales for people from all over the world,” said John Gunter of Frontiers North Adventures.

Frontiers North provides package tours and takes travellers to see polar bears in bus-like tundra buggies. A tour group was planning to arrive by train in the autumn, Gunter said, and he’s been scrambling to make arrangements for them to fly instead.

Gunter said he’s also having to make alternate arrangements for vehicles, construction materials and other supplies that are too large to come by plane. They’ll now arrive by barge from Montreal, he said, but at much greater expense.

Prices for food that restaurants in Churchill serve to visitors is also expected to rise.