Tour touting Hudson Bay 'Stonehenge' site disregards cultural, ecological importance, critics say

A northern Manitoba tour advertising a trip to an ancient Inuit hunting camp is raising concerns that tourists' presence there could damage an "irreplaceable" cultural and historical site, and the critical animal habitats around it.

The company behind the tour describes it as a "life-changing" adventure with access to Arctic animals in an "awe-inspiring northern wilderness largely untouched by human existence" and visits to what it calls "the Hudson Bay version of Stonehenge — ancient Inuit building remains and hunting grounds thousands of years old."

Lazy Bear Expeditions in Churchill, Man., promotes its Hudson Bay Wilderness Outpost Adventure as "five days based in a remote, sub-Arctic outpost" searching for polar bears and other wildlife, along with visiting nearby coves, estuaries and other coastal points of interest by boat.

However, the trip — advertised on Lazy Bear's website at $16,800 per person — has caught the attention of more than just tourists, prompting conservation and hunting groups to voice concerns to the province about the overnight visits' potential to disrupt the areas included.

"You wouldn't just build, you know, a hotel right on the Grand Canyon," said Christopher Debicki, vice-president of policy development for the conservation group Oceans North, which was among the groups that recently wrote to provincial Natural Resources Minister Jamie Moses about the tours.

"You wouldn't build a hotel accommodation at the petroforms in Whiteshell Provincial Park. You wouldn't build a residential accommodation in a gravesite — right?"

Debicki said the tour appears to offer to bring people to stay in a houseboat-like vessel or "outpost," which Lazy Bear's website says is moored at Hubbart Point. That site is home to artifacts including meat caches, tent rings and graves, he said.

Carbon dating has determined the camp (also known as Qikiqtaarjuit and Hubbard Point) has been in use going back at least 1,000 years, Debicki said, making it an "astonishing" site of extreme historical and cultural significance that should be treated with respect.

He said he's also concerned about the potential for tourists staying in the area to disrupt the nearby Seal River estuary — a site within the Seal River watershed, a pristine area being considered as a possible Indigenous protected and conserved area and national park reserve. 

Natural Resources Minister Moses said the province is now investigating "resource tourism activities potentially occurring in non-permitted areas" in the region north of Churchill — an investigation he said would include working with the federal government regarding any off-shore activities involved.

"We are taking due diligence to ensure historical, cultural, and ecological importance of natural resources in Manitoba," Moses said in an emailed statement.

Lazy Bear Expeditions owner Wally Daudrich said the company has been doing "naturalist boat tours of the Hudson Bay coast for 30 years" and in that time has been "one of the largest employers in Churchill employing a significant local Indigenous workforce."

"We would like to thank the Gary Doer government as well as then-Minister Eric Robinson (also our MLA for Rupertsland) and his personal advocacy for the ecotourism permits related to the Manitoba coastline that were granted over 20 years ago allowing us access to the public land we tour," Daudrich said in an emailed statement.

Doer was Manitoba's premier from 1999 to 2009. Robinson was the member of the legislative assembly for the northern Manitoba provincial riding of Rupertsland, later renamed Keewatinook, from 1993 until 2016.