Churchill, Manitoba

Churchill (Inuit: Kuugjuaq) is a town in northern Manitoba, Canada on the west shore of Hudson Bay, roughly 110 kilometres from the Manitoba/Nunavut border. It is most famous for the many polar bears that move toward the shore from inland in the autumn, leading to the nickname "Polar Bear Capital of the World" that has helped its growing tourism industry.

Geography

Churchill is located along the Hudson Bay at the 58th parallel north far above where most Canadian populated areas are located. Churchill is located far from any other towns or cities, with Thompson, approximately 400km to the south, being the closest larger settlement. Manitoba's provincial capital, Winnipeg, is approximately 1000km south of Churchill.

History

A variety of nomadic Arctic people lived and hunted in this region. The Thule people arrived around AD 1000 from the west, and later evolved into the present-day Inuit culture. The Dene people arrived around 500 from farther north. Since before the time of European contact, the region around Churchill has been predominantly inhabited by the Chipewyan and Cree natives.

Manitoba

Manitoba (ⁱ/ˌmænᵻˈtoʊbə/) is a province located at the longitudinal centre of Canada. It is one of the three prairie provinces and is the fifth-most populous province in Canada, with a population of 1,208,268 as of 2011. Manitoba covers an area of 649,950 square kilometres (250,900 sq mi) with a widely varied landscape; the southern and western regions are predominantly prairie grassland, the eastern and northern regions are dominated by the Canadian Shield, and the far northern regions along the Hudson Bay coast are arctic tundra. Manitoba is bordered by the provinces of Ontario to the east and Saskatchewan to the west, the territory of Nunavut to the north, and the US states of North Dakota and Minnesota to the south.

More than 90% of Manitoba's population lives within the far southern regions of the province, where its arable land and largest cities are located. The northern region of Manitoba, which encompasses nearly 70% the province's total area, is mostly undeveloped consisting primarily of remote and isolated communities amongst vast wilderness.Winnipeg is the capital and most populous city in Manitoba by a significant margin, with 730,018 people residing in the Winnipeg Capital Region. Other cities in the province are Brandon, Portage la Prairie, Steinbach, Thompson, Winkler, Selkirk, Dauphin, Morden, and Flin Flon.

Winston Churchill

Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, KG, OM, CH, TD, PC, DL, FRS, RA (30 November 1874 – 24 January 1965) was a British statesman who was the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1940 to 1945 and again from 1951 to 1955. Churchill was also an officer in the British Army, a historian, a writer (as Winston S. Churchill), and an artist. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature, and was the first person to be made an honorary citizen of the United States.

Churchill was born into the family of the Dukes of Marlborough, a branch of the Spencer family. His father, Lord Randolph Churchill, was a charismatic politician who served as Chancellor of the Exchequer; his mother, Jennie Jerome, was an American socialite. As a young army officer, he saw action in British India, the Sudan, and the Second Boer War. He gained fame as a war correspondent and wrote books about his campaigns.

At the forefront of politics for fifty years, he held many political and cabinet positions. Before the First World War, he served as President of the Board of Trade, Home Secretary, and First Lord of the Admiralty as part of Asquith's Liberal government. During the war, he continued as First Lord of the Admiralty until the disastrous Gallipoli Campaign caused his departure from government. He then briefly resumed active army service on the Western Front as commander of the 6th Battalion of the Royal Scots Fusiliers. He returned to government under Lloyd George as Minister of Munitions, Secretary of State for War, Secretary of State for Air, then Secretary of State for the Colonies. After two years out of Parliament, he served as Chancellor of the Exchequer in Baldwin's Conservative government of 1924–1929, controversially returning the pound sterling in 1925 to the gold standard at its pre-war parity, a move widely seen as creating deflationary pressure on the UK economy.