To Beach Their Own

On our last day in Churchill, Audrey and I went beachcombing for the first time.

It has nothing to do with the legendary CBC program of the same name, and simply involves finding a piece of coastline and looking for small ‘treasures’ among the gravel, sand and stones. Typically nothing of value, but colourful stones, occasional fossils and bits of sea glass or broken porcelain and pottery. 

This is something Glory has done with Belinda since she worked up here in 2020, and Belinda kindly brought us along to her prized spot out by Cape Merry.

It is not a long walk from the gravel road to the beach, but not without obstacles; the soft soggy terrain can leave you with a soaker if you aren’t careful, and while there are often large rocks or boulders to step on, not all of them are set squarely on the ground (or atop other stones).

With every step, I pictured myself slipping and either wrenching an ankle or breaking a leg. Knowing that the four ladies I was with would be incapable of carrying me out really gave me pause. In fact, I figured it might take a helicopter and bear sling to extract me from the broken terrain, which would surely play havoc with our 7:30 train departure!

By the time we reached the beach, my neck and shoulders were sore with stress, but this was quickly forgotten as we all turned our attention back to the ground. I quickly saw the therapeutic element to this activity, as my thoughts swiftly migrated away from aches and train schedules and words and refocused almost exclusively on colors, shapes and textures. Paying that much attention to the ground provided a very direct link to my inner child.

Fenya found a small fossil almost immediately, and then a glass marble. Belinda and Glory found marbles fairly quickly as well. “What makes them stand out from the ground? “ I asked, “the color, the translucence or the shape?” The roundness, two people answered almost simultaneously.

Glory pointed out a marble close to my foot, and I found another one just under edge of some low foliage - the roundness is definitely what distinguished it from the gravel and sand around it.

The next hour passed surprisingly quickly. I collected some bits of sea glass in a range of colours and a couple of bottle fragments (including a brown bottle bottom from a distillery in Glasgow), but also a few stones, a piece of bone, some driftwood, and some porcelain fragments.

My most interesting piece was a verdigris-covered valve handle of indeterminate age, but the others found a doll’s hand, piece of animal vertebrae, and a bottle with a partial logo for the Arctic Beverage Company, which I’d never heard of.

We found a shorter route back to the road, but it was also wetter, making our socks a bit damp, but far less treacherous footing.

Back home, the girls and Audrey and I packed our treasures into Ziplocs so they could all be muled home on our train. With any luck we will get a chance to build them into some shadow box collages with resin, and have a permanent reminder of our beachcombing experience on the edge of Hudson’s Bay.