What is the significance of the polar bear in Canadian culture?

Polar bears are an iconic Canadian species and a symbol of Canada's Arctic. Canada is home to about 16,000 of the world's roughly 26,000 polar bears, the largest population of any country, distributed across thirteen subpopulations from Hudson Bay through to the High Arctic and Inuit Nunangat. The species (Ursus maritimus) is listed as a Species of Special Concern under Canada's Species at Risk Act and as Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List.

Polar bears appear on the Canadian two-dollar coin, the toonie, introduced on February 19, 1996 by the Royal Canadian Mint and designed by Wildlife Habitat Canada artist Brent Townsend. They appear on the Northwest Territories' licence plate, the official animal designation of Manitoba, the Royal Canadian Air Force Search and Rescue badge, the logo of the World Wildlife Fund's polar regions campaign, and the central tourism brand of Churchill, Manitoba, the self-styled Polar Bear Capital of the World.

Inuit have lived alongside polar bears for thousands of years and call the species Nanuk in Inuktitut. Traditional knowledge of polar bear behaviour, denning sites, and seasonal movement informs contemporary co-management agreements between Inuit communities, Nunavut, the Northwest Territories, and the federal government. Inuit are entitled to harvest a regulated number of polar bears each year under the Polar Bear Range States Agreement and the 1973 International Agreement on the Conservation of Polar Bears.

Climate change is the primary threat to polar bears: declining sea ice limits their hunting range for ringed seals, their main prey. Average sea ice extent in the western Hudson Bay subpopulation has declined by about three weeks of ice cover per decade since 1980, and bear body condition has measurably worsened. Polar Bears International, headquartered in Bozeman, Montana with research bases at Churchill, runs the annual fall Tundra Buggy season for scientists and ecotourists.