Budka, P. (2023). Infrastructural disruption, entanglement, and change in Northern Manitoba, Canada. Paper at American Anthropological Association (AAA)/Canadian Anthropology Society (CASCA) Annual Meeting, Toronto, Canada: Metro Toronto Convention Centre, 15-19 November.

Abstract

This paper explores transport infrastructures in the Subarctic town of Churchill, Canada. The community of 870 people in Northern Manitoba, which is not accessible via roads, is unique in terms of transport infrastructures. It is home to the only deep-water port on the Arctic Ocean that is directly linked to the North American railway system. And due to the former presence of US and Canadian military the community has a big airport, which has become key for the growing tourism industry in the “Polar Bear Capital of the World”. Churchill only exists because of these infrastructures and it has been changing together with them. This entanglement becomes particularly visible and tangible when infrastructure gets disrupted, when infrastructure fails. As in 2017, when a flooding destroyed the tracks of the Hudson Bay Railway and Churchill was without land connection for 18 months because nobody wanted to pay for repair. Five years later, however, and in the light of recent geopolitical developments, the federal and the provincial governments agreed to invest up to CA$ 147 million in the Hudson Bay Railway and the port. By discussing ethnographic findings, gathered within the ERC project InfraNorth, this paper focuses on the role of transport infrastructures in sustaining and transforming the community of Churchill.