Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/125316
madeinmanitoba Belugas, Birds and Bears, Oh My Eyes pop and jaws drop on a northern Manitoba wildlife safari story and photography by Shel Zolkewich W e pull away from the dock on this still, sunny July morning. The 30-horsepower Evinrude pushes our boat across North Knife Lake, one of countless deep blue bodies of water in Manitoba's north. Face forward, I feel the magic begin. My shoulders – usually hunched near my ears – slide down. I happily imagine all those unread email messages slipping out of my inbox, whisked away by the wind. A smile breaks across my face as I savour the knowledge that, for the next few days at North Knife Lake Lodge, every demand of daily life will be eliminated. My only job is fishing. Manitoba has long been tagged as a prairie province with rolling fields and agriculture aplenty, but a whole different landscape prevails in the north. From the air, it's an even split of lake and land. The waters swim with northern pike, Arctic grayling, walleye and massive lake trout. Caribou roam the land and moose hunters arrive in search of trophy antlers. In fact, Manitoba is a parttime home to the Beverly and Qamanirjuaq p20-25_MadeinMan.indd 21 herds of central Canadian barren-ground caribou. Estimated at between 400,000 and 500,000 animals strong, this herd moves from Manitoba to Nunavut and back again during migration. "Outside of Africa, it's one of the only places you can see vast numbers of free-ranging wildlife on the move," says my fishing guide Kent Michie, also a taxidermist and all-around outdoorsy guy. Though I won't be hunting on this trip (the season doesn't open until September), I'm told there's caribou on the menu. Indeed, on this week-plus trip (including my days at North Knife Lake), I'll be sampling the very best of what Manitoba has to offer: spectacular fishing to start, a walk with a polar bear in the middle and a swim with a whale for a big finish. It's called the Fishing to Polar Bears Adventure – and an adventure it will be. For decades, hunters and anglers, mostly from the United States, have been doing just that while staying at lodges dotted across the sub Arctic landscape. More recently, ecotourists have discovered the mysteries of the Manitoba shoreline of Hudson Bay. It's here that birders get busy GOING PL ACES >> s u m m e r 2 0 1 3 21 13-04-12 1:06 PM