Testing The Waters Through The Canadian Arctic

For centuries, the search for the Northwest Passage captivated explorers - and led many to their deaths. Today, warming seas have made it possible to traverse the fabled route through the Canadian Arctic's first passenger ships in the region to survey this emerging frontier.

- Stefan Ruiz

I don't think, I realised just how desperate we were to see polar bears until the trip was almost over. We’d been in the Arctic for nearly two weeks, and we’d hardly seen any animals at all, apart from a mound of fur that our leaders identified as a musk ox. A musk ox, I’ll admit, is not something you see every day, but it’s also not what you have in mind when you book an Arctic cruise. What you have in mind is polar bears.

I think our leaders understood this. I think that’s why they steered our inflatable skiffs toward the mother bear and her cub as soon as we saw them off in the distance, two specks of white against the drab background of rock and sea. I think that’s why we kept getting closer and closer even as they tried to swim away, crossing a cove and scrambling up a cliff. There were people on the cruise—a minority, to be sure—who later criticised the decision to follow them. Polar bears, they pointed out, often go up to a month without finding anything to eat and can ill afford to waste precious calories paddling away from people, even if those people only want to share pictures of them on Facebook.

But I’m not sure we had a choice. Having spent two weeks on a ship populated mostly by Canadians, I can confirm that Canadians really are very polite. But if we hadn’t seen any polar bears, I think there might have been a riot.