Port of Churchill
Encyclopedia
Churchill, Manitoba
Churchill is a town on the shore of Hudson Bay in Manitoba, Canada. 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.-History:A variety of nomadic...
, Manitoba
Manitoba
Manitoba is a Canadian prairie province with an area of . The province has over 110,000 lakes and has a largely continental climate because of its flat topography. Agriculture, mostly concentrated in the fertile southern and western parts of the province, is vital to the province's economy; other...
, Canada is a port
Port
A port is a location on a coast or shore containing one or more harbors where ships can dock and transfer people or cargo to or from land....
on the Hudson Bay
Hudson Bay
Hudson Bay , sometimes called Hudson's Bay, is a large body of saltwater in northeastern Canada. It drains a very large area, about , that includes parts of Ontario, Quebec, Saskatchewan, Alberta, most of Manitoba, southeastern Nunavut, as well as parts of North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota,...
, part of the Arctic Ocean
Arctic Ocean
The Arctic Ocean, located in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Arctic north polar region, is the smallest and shallowest of the world's five major oceanic divisions...
. It was once owned by the Government of Canada
Government of Canada
The Government of Canada, formally Her Majesty's Government, is the system whereby the federation of Canada is administered by a common authority; in Canadian English, the term can mean either the collective set of institutions or specifically the Queen-in-Council...
but was sold in 1997 to the American company OmniTRAX
OmniTRAX
OmniTRAX, Inc. is one of North America's largest private railroad and transportation management companies, providing management services to 16 regional and short-line railroads that serve 10 U.S...
to run privately.
The port has four deep-sea berths capable of handling Panamax
Panamax
Panamax and New Panamax are popular terms for the size limits for ships traveling through the Panama Canal. Formally, the limits and requirements are published by the Panama Canal Authority titled "Vessel Requirements"...
-size vessels for the loading and unloading of grain, bulk commodities, general cargo, and tanker vessels. The port is connected to the Hudson Bay Railway
Hudson Bay Railway
Hudson Bay Railway is a Canadian railway operating over of trackage in northern Manitoba.HBRY was formed in July 1997 to purchase former Canadian National Railway trackage running north from CN trackage at The Pas, MB on two branches, one to Flin Flon, MB and on to Lynn Lake, MB, the other to...
, an affiliated company of OmniTRAX. Further connections are made with the Canadian National Railway
Canadian National Railway
The Canadian National Railway Company is a Canadian Class I railway headquartered in Montreal, Quebec. CN's slogan is "North America's Railroad"....
system.
Port operations
The port is iced in for much of the year and is accessible only between late July and early November. Shallow waters also restrict its development as an ocean port. Despite these restrictions the port remains useful for shipping grain and other bulk cargos because shipping by rail costs several times as much, per ton, as shipping by sea.The port is a compulsory pilotage area. Pilotage is provided by the Great Lakes Pilotage Authority which despite its name is also responsible for pilotage on the Hudson Bay
Hudson Bay
Hudson Bay , sometimes called Hudson's Bay, is a large body of saltwater in northeastern Canada. It drains a very large area, about , that includes parts of Ontario, Quebec, Saskatchewan, Alberta, most of Manitoba, southeastern Nunavut, as well as parts of North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota,...
coast of the provinces of Ontario and Manitoba. Pilotage charges between July 20 and October 31 follow a published schedule; outside these dates charges are based on cost recovery.
Typically, the port is used for outgoing shipments of grain, usually from the Canadian Wheat Board
Canadian Wheat Board
The Canadian Wheat Board was established by the Parliament of Canada on 5 July 1935 as a mandatory producer marketing system for wheat and barley in Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and a small part of British Columbia...
. Since 2007 port activity has diversified and increased in line with growth in Arctic mining operations in Nunavut
Nunavut
Nunavut is the largest and newest federal territory of Canada; it was separated officially from the Northwest Territories on April 1, 1999, via the Nunavut Act and the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement Act, though the actual boundaries had been established in 1993...
and an expansion in supply ship reloading. In September 2007 the port handled its first domestic export trade, shipping 12,500 tonnes of wheat to Halifax aboard the Arctic supply ship Kathryn Spirit. On October 18, 2007 the port received its first import trade in seven years and the first ever from Russia, a shipment of fertilizer
Fertilizer
Fertilizer is any organic or inorganic material of natural or synthetic origin that is added to a soil to supply one or more plant nutrients essential to the growth of plants. A recent assessment found that about 40 to 60% of crop yields are attributable to commercial fertilizer use...
purchased by Farmers of North America
Farmers of North America
Farmers of North America is a volume-buyer group, incorporated in March 1998 by a rural Saskatchewan farm family, with the intention of increasing the profitability of the small farmer. The organization has now grown over 7500 producers representing more than in British Columbia, Alberta,...
. The shipment is supposed to be the beginning of an Arctic Bridge
Arctic bridge
The Arctic Bridge or Arctic Sea Bridge is a seasonal sea route linking Russia to Canada, specifically the Russian port of Murmansk to the Hudson Bay port of Churchill, Manitoba. Churchill is the principal seaport on Canada's northern coast and has rail and air connections to the rest of Canada...
that would link Churchill with the Russian port of Murmansk
Murmansk
Murmansk is a city and the administrative center of Murmansk Oblast, Russia. It serves as a seaport and is located in the extreme northwest part of Russia, on the Kola Bay, from the Barents Sea on the northern shore of the Kola Peninsula, not far from Russia's borders with Norway and Finland...
.
The port is almost entirely reliant on grain from the Canadian Wheat Board (CWB) for its viability. Wheat accounts for 90 per cent of all traffic through the port. According to a November 6, 2008 press release, the CWB shipped 424,000 tons of western Canadian wheat through the port of Churchill during the 2008 shipping season. The first wheat left port on August 8, and the last of 15 freighters left on October 20. Exporting Prairie wheat through Churchill saves Canadian farmers money on transportation in terms of rail-freight costs and avoiding Saint Lawrence Seaway
Saint Lawrence Seaway
The Saint Lawrence Seaway , , is the common name for a system of locks, canals and channels that permits ocean-going vessels to travel from the Atlantic Ocean to the North American Great Lakes, as far as Lake Superior. Legally it extends from Montreal to Lake Erie, including the Welland Canal...
charges. The CWB encourages shipments through the use of its Churchill Storage Program which pays farmers to retain grain on-farm for later movement through the port. Because the Churchill shipping season begins before the new wheat crop is harvested each summer, the Storage Program ensures adequate volumes of grain are available for export by bringing in grain saved from the year before.
The port of Churchill exported 710,000 tonnes of grain in 1977, 621,000 tonnes in 2007, and 529,000 tonnes in 2009.
Alternatives to grain
The government of ManitobaManitoba
Manitoba is a Canadian prairie province with an area of . The province has over 110,000 lakes and has a largely continental climate because of its flat topography. Agriculture, mostly concentrated in the fertile southern and western parts of the province, is vital to the province's economy; other...
has proposed that the Port of Churchill
Port of Churchill
The Port of Churchill in Churchill, Manitoba, Canada is a port on the Hudson Bay, part of the Arctic Ocean. It was once owned by the Government of Canada but was sold in 1997 to the American company OmniTRAX to run privately....
could serve as an "Arctic gateway", accepting containerships from Asia whose containers would then be transported south by rail to major destinations in North America.