Emma Dickins (left) and guide Shayna Plett at Nanuk Polar Bear Lodge on the Nanuk Emergence Quest.
Fresh off a New Zealand summer, Emma Dickins stepped onto the plane in shorts and a t-shirt, pants stuffed in her bag, just in case. She landed in Canada to a reminder that February in Manitoba is “bloody cold.”
Emma has managed Nanuk Polar Bear Lodge with her fiancé, Danny Nicholls, for the past two seasons. She is back this time as a participant in something she has never experienced before: the Nanuk Emergence Quest and the Cloud Wolves of the Kaska Coast safaris.
From mid-February through mid-March, guides and scouts on the Nanuk Emergence Quest fan out daily across the Kaskatamagan Wildlife Management Area searching for polar bear mothers leading newborn cubs from their dens into the cold Arctic winter and out onto the Hudson Bay sea ice.
Polar bears know how to relax at Nanuk Polar Bear Lodge. Emma Dickins photo.
Demand is so high for this safari that there is a multi-year waitlist, and Emma is here for all of it, staying on through the Cloud Wolves of the Kaska Coast and the polar bear safaris that follow at Nanuk through to November. For the February-March safaris, she will be working alongside Nicole Spinks and Ben Lawrence, who have managed Seal River Heritage Lodge for almost a decade.
“We’re just a couple of Kiwis that found our way to a place where there are polar bears,” said Emma. “Canada’s got us.”
An Unlikely Path to Polar Bears
Like the moose, Emma and Danny took an unlikely path to polar bears. Emma Dickins photo.
Emma grew up in the Taranaki and Manawatu regions of New Zealand’s North Island. Hill country. Farmland. Volcanoes. She studied psychology and criminology at university, then went into a corporate career in electricity metering and oil and gas project management. Danny, her fiancé of more than seven years, is a carpenter who has run project teams and construction builds back home.
A few years ago, the two bought a one-way ticket to Canada to snowboard in British Columbia. They did hotel management and maintenance work in BC, and were already planning their next move when Churchill Wild came up during an orientation session with a working holiday company. They filed it away, and when the snowboarding season ended, they reached out.
Danny came first, working a maintenance season at Dymond Lake Ecolodge. Churchill Wild enjoyed having him around, and conversations about returning in a management capacity followed. Emma and Danny arrived at Nanuk as co-managers and have been running the lodge together since.
“Danny does everything outside,” said Emma. “If it breaks, he can fix it, whether it be plumbing, electrical, building, or mechanical. I look after the inside, the kitchen team, the cleaning staff, the admin.”
Guest reviews consistently single out the Nanuk experience, and the credit over the past few years lands on this pair.
Emma and Danny at Nanuk Polar Bear Lodge.
What Makes It Work
“I think we’re lucky in that we’re just as excited to be there as the guests,” said Emma. “Sometimes you’ll see staff who have been there for months, and they’re more excited about a polar bear than some of the guests who have been there for 24 hours. That excitement is contagious.”
When the wildlife doesn’t cooperate, when bears stay out of range for days, and guests who have travelled halfway around the world start to feel it, Emma has a straightforward approach.
“The biggest thing is trying to make sure people don’t just give up, because you really don’t know what can happen. And trying to open their eyes to be appreciative of where they are. Very few people in the world will ever get to stand where they stand. We can’t control wildlife because it’s wild, obviously. But if we can make every other aspect of their experience ten out of ten, that helps.”
The Wildlife Encounters That Stay With You
Young polar bear testing one of the cannons at Nanuk Polar Bear Lodge. Emma Dickins photo.
Emma has been at Nanuk through full summer seasons and deep into fall. She has watched bears through the heat of late summer when they’re mostly, in her words, “just blobbing out on the coast,” and into October and November when the sparring starts and the ice moves in.
Her favourite encounters have all happened close, right outside the lodge windows.
“There was one bear in particular that was just lying and rolling around in the snow,” said Emma. “And then we had some diving into snowdrifts like kids, full-on diving in, and all you’d see would be their butt and their legs. They obviously could smell or hear something under the snow.”
The moment that stopped her was a bear standing on its hind legs at the window.
“You’re standing on a raised platform and basically looking it in the eyes because it is so large,” said Emma. “It doesn’t happen very often, but that’s pretty cool to see.”
She has also watched wolves move past the lodge, unhunted and unafraid.
“That’s pretty special as well,” said Emma. “It doesn’t get old.”
A New Polar Bear Season, a New Experience
Moose antler snack. Nanuk Polar Bear Lodge. Emma Dickins photo.
Emma is at Nanuk for the Nanuk Emergence Quest, a series of guided expeditions into denning territory, searching for mothers and cubs making their first journey toward the coast and the sea ice. The cubs will be only months old. The window to witness them is narrow and entirely subject to nature’s whims in such a vast area.
After that, she will stay for Cloud Wolves of the Kaska Coast, which is built around the semi-resident wolf packs at Nanuk. Jad Davenport, the National Geographic photographer who leads these safaris, has described them as unlike anything he has encountered in a career that has taken him to 160 countries. Wolves that have never been hunted and have no fear of humans. Animals that will approach on foot, and close.
Emma has seen bears at the window and wolves on the runway during her time at Nanuk, but she has never been here in the depths of winter for denning season, or for the wolves during their breeding season.
“It’s kind of like our second home now,” said Emma. “Just you and the wild as far as the eye can see.”
“We just love it.”
