Jen Arnold created a miniature of Seal River Heritage Lodge as part of the Churchill Wild diorama, then lived in it on the Birds, Bears & Belugas safari.
For five days this summer, Jen Arnold stood on the tundra at Seal River Heritage Lodge, sixty km north of Churchill, in a place so flat and open that the willows are the tallest thing on the horizon. She had already built this exact stretch of coastline once, in miniature, out of cereal boxes and 3D-printed polar bears, working entirely from photographs in a spare room in Winnipeg.
Now she was standing in it.
Asked how her Birds, Bears & Belugas safari went, she didn’t hold back.
“Oh my God, it was awesome,” said Arnold. “You know what, I’ve never experienced anything like it. Everybody was so friendly. When people saw the miniature, it was lovely. The lodge was beautiful. The whole experience was just magical.”
Mother polar bear makes it real
Male polar bear steals beluga whale from mom and cubs at Seal River. Jen Arnold photo.
On one of the group’s boat outings, the gap between the model she’d built and the real thing closed all at once. A mother polar bear had dragged a beluga calf up onto the rocks along the shore, and four or five other bears moved in on the kill.
What followed was nearly two hours of a mother defending her meal against animals twice her size, backing off, circling in again, while sixteen guests from Arnold’s group watched from the water.
“We saw a mom kill a beluga baby and feed her cubs,” said Arnold. “And then four or five other bears came for it. Mom was fighting them off, and then kind of backed off. We were there for hours watching. It was wild.”
Even the lodge’s guides, who spend entire seasons on that coast, told her it was rare.
“Even the guides, probably Boomer (Jerritt), were saying this was so uncommon,” said Arnold. “So we were very lucky, very lucky.”
There was a moment in it that tested her more than the bears did.
“I had to really check myself because this is nature, you have to let it be, right?” said Arnold. “ “We can’t intervene. And I was thinking what are we going to see? Something really bad? But we didn’t.”
More bears, more moments
Polar bear outside the fence at Seal River Heritage Lodge. Jen Arnold photo.
The beluga kill was the trip’s centrepiece, but not its only encounter. One bear came quite close to the group on a walk before losing its nerve and running.
“We came upon a bear on one of the walks, but it was very sketchy,” said Arnold. “The bear was very scared of us. So it took off, but we got, I don’t know how far it would be, but it was pretty close. But somehow, I always felt safe.”
Another bear lingered outside the lodge fence long enough for close-up photos on the way back from a Zodiak trip , most of them taken on her iPhone. Her father, a professional photographer, had already told her not to bother borrowing one of his cameras.
“My dad is a professional photographer,” said Arnold. “I asked him if could borrow one of his cameras. He said, ‘Jen, honestly, just use your phone.’ And he was right. ”
Nanuk Polar Bear Lodge miniature by Jen Arnold.
The food, the guides, and the bugs all got their due. The food she called simply amazing, twice over. The guides, she said, stayed remarkably upbeat given the length of the season.
“They were always on point,” said Arnold. “We even commented, how do you keep the smile on your face? How do you keep going? Because they do it for months, and they said, ‘We don’t know, we just love the job so much.”
The bugs were less forgiving.
“Oh my god, they were terrible,” said Arnold. “But you know what? They don’t really like me, so I didn’t get many bites on my exposed neck, so that was good.” Her bug jacket, she said, saved her.
Jen in her bug jacket at Seal River Heritage Lodge. Jen Arnold photo.
Her roommate for the trip turned was Diana Robson, a curator with the Manitoba Museum, out collecting specimens for scientific purposes, and it was her Robson who spoke first when the beluga kill unfolded in front of them.
“When we saw the bear with the mom and the killing of that beluga, she said, ‘Jen, this is the best thing I’ve ever seen in my life,’” said Arnold.
Guests glassing for polar bears at Seal River Heritage Lodge. Jen Arnold photo.
There were no northern lights, but there was something else waiting for her that no photograph had prepared her for: the sheer emptiness of the place she’d already built.
“When we flew in to Seal River Heritage Lodge, I could clearly see that it was literally in the middle of nowhere, and I teared up,” said Arnold. “To see it live was like seeing the Eiffel Tower. You see it your whole life in pictures, and then you actually see it, and it’s like, holy crap, this thing is real.”
How a Netflix star came to Churchill Wild
Arnold is a Winnipeg forensic service coordinator by day, working with people who have severe mental illness caught up in the justice system. Miniatures started as the opposite of that, something small enough to hold in two hands and control completely. She built her first one, a version of her mother’s childhood home in Winnipeg’s North End, similar to the cardboard houses people used to set under Christmas trees. She posted it on her Instagram profile @justcallme_jen_. A friend from university asked for one of her own. Then another.
That trail eventually led to a diorama of Winnipeg’s City Hall installed in the mayor’s office, and to Best in Miniature, the Netflix competition series that flew her to Hamilton, Ontario, for three weeks to build a Winnipeg Tudor home against nine other competitors.
“I represented Winnipeg in Manitoba,” said Arnold.
Season 3 cast of Best in Miniature on set (L-R) Jen Arnold, Nalini Sookdeo, Tiffany Monk, Shelley Acker, Elliott Langford, Lance Cardinal, Susan Canaday Henry, August Riche, Arline Smith, Mike Fraysher (Katia Taylor Photography/marblemedia)
It was that same Instagram feed, still active years later, that caught the attention of Churchill Wild’s Marketing Manager Maggie Cole, who was looking for a Manitoban to build something for the newly renovated Churchill airport. The commission: a permanent diorama of Churchill Wild’s three ecolodges, Seal River Heritage Lodge, Nanuk Polar Bear Lodge, and Dymond Lake Ecolodge, sized to fit a 53-inch kiosk in the terminal.
Arnold had never set foot on any of the three properties. She built all of it from photographs alone, using what she calls, only half-joking, her own private measuring system.
Dymond Lake Ecolodge miniature by Jen Arnold.
“Honestly, I call it Jen scale,” said Arnold. “It sounds cheesy, but that’s what I call it. I don’t have a scale. It’s whatever fits.”
A friend 3D-printed the wildlife, polar bears, belugas, wolves, owls, foxes, and tiny figures in red jackets to separate guests from guides in grey parkas. Arnold’s father printed skies to wrap the kiosk’s centre pillar, including a version of the northern lights for the Nanuk side. She then matched the purple of blooming fireweed near the airport by eye, to get the landscaping right down to the wildflowers.
An unexpected visitor
Churchill Wild diorama creator Jen Arnold and Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew in front of Jen’s new creation at the Churchill airport.
When she flew up to install the finished piece, she had company she didn’t expect. Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew’s plane happened to be refuelling at the Churchill airport that same day, and he stopped to look over the diorama with her before continuing on.
“I was in the airport alone,” said Arnold. “A plane arrived in and he came in while I was working on the diorama. There’s a picture of me and him and the miniature.”
Arnold spent the days finishing the diorama while staying at the Churchill Wild’s Blueberry Inn in Churchill, and fell for the town the way a lot of first-time visitors do.
Jen hard at work creating the Seal River Heritage Lodge miniature.
“I love it, it’s wonderful,” said Arnold. “The no crime, driving around and leaving your doors unlocked. I was like, what? Where are we? It’s just another universe.”
Two days after the diorama went into its kiosk at the Churchill airport for good, Arnold boarded a 16-seater plane bound for Seal River. This was the part she couldn’t have built from a photograph.
Most people who build miniatures never get to stand inside their finished masterpieces. Arnold did it on a stretch of Hudson Bay coast where a mother polar bear was busy proving that nothing she could create would ever truly match the real thing. Arnold came as close as possible. And she not only built it…
She lived it.
