BEAR WITNESS

CELEBRATING A SPRINGTIME RITUAL OF POLAR BEAR CUBS EMERGING FROM THE DENS OF MANITOBA’S FAMED WAPUSK NATIONAL PARK

- ABI HAYWARD

TO TAKE PHOTOS OF POLAR BEARS in Wapusk National Park, Man., Daisy Gilardini has to go on a journey. In early spring, after a flight to Winnipeg, then to Churchill, Gilardini takes a train south toward Chesnaye, about 40 kilometres from Churchill as the raven flies. In the middle of nowhere, now in pitch darkness, the train stops. In the bone-chilling cold of a -40 C Arctic night, northern lights swirl overhead as she hauls her bags of photography gear off the train. From there, it’s a bumpy drive over frozen tundra to Wat’Chee Lodge — the only licensed operator that can take people to see polar bears in Wapusk, the southernmost polar bear denning area in the world.

Gilardini has been making this trip since a holiday to Canada in November 1999, when she was working as an accountant in Switzerland. Her first sight of polar bears brought tears to her eyes. She fell in love and has since followed her passion for the polar regions all over the Arctic. She became a full-time photographer in 2006 and, just under a decade later, photographed a mother polar bear and her cubs emerging from their winter den for the first time.

Mother bears in Wapusk dig their maternity den in October, usually in the snow but now, more often, in the soil. She gives birth to her cubs a month later, and the little family spends the winter in the den. The den is warm, dark and cosy, with only enough space for the mother to sleep and turn over. There is not enough room for her cubs to play, to fight, to explore. They feed and grow and sleep.