Since the dawn of time, humans have shared a complicated relationship with Mother Nature.
Despite her selfless, life-giving sustenance, we insist on pushing her limits at every turn, testing her boundaries and disrupting the natural order for our own frivolous enjoyment and personal gain. We are all part of the same vast, intricate, interconnected web of life, yet so often paint ourselves as adversaries.
Too commonly, we don’t give nature the respect it deserves.
So perhaps there are lessons to learn from the legendary Troy Hurtubise, star of the cult-classic documentary Project Grizzly.
Released in 1996, the Peter Lynch-directed film chronicles Hurtubise’s own complicated relationship with nature, through his years-long efforts to build the world’s first “grizzly-bear-proof” suit—which of course includes the absolutely wild footage of him testing his concepts.
You’ve likely seen clips even without knowing the origin: Hurtubise standing in his clunky suit, nearly immobile, while a massive log swings into him (to simulate the strength of a grizzly’s swat, he says); a pickup truck with a mattress tied to its grill drives into him at 30 mph, sending him flying; an assistant kicks him down the edge of a massive escarpment, sending him tumbling in a spectacle usually reserved for professional stuntpeople.
The carnage is truly incredible (and hilarious—this is slapstick at its finest) to watch, but the film’s heart shines through in its insights into the eccentric Hurtubise himself.
Obsessed with an encounter with “the old man”—a grizzly bear he once met in a forest clearing—Hurtubise’s passion for learning more about the animals consumes years of his life, spanning multiple iterations of his grizzly suit and earning him worldwide notoriety along the way.
His ultimate goals are never made entirely clear in the film—what, exactly, is he hoping to learn? Who is he hoping might benefit from his research, and how?—but Hurtubise’s zany passion is evident throughout.
“I’m here for the grizzly,” he says at one point in the film, sitting around a campfire in the remote wilderness telling war stories with his buddies. “I’m here for the preservation part of it.”
Sadly (or thankfully, some might say), the effectiveness of Hurtubise’s suit against an actual grizzly is never proven on film, though its durability can hardly be questioned (mobility is another question).
Still, Whistlerites might be forgiven if their recent Google searches include the schematics for Hurtubise’s grizzly suit.
Last year, the Conservation Officer Service received 30 reports of grizzly conflicts in the Whistler area from Jan. 1 to July 5, and a Pique Freedom of Information request found reports of grizzly conflicts have effectively doubled in recent years (full 2023 stats for the region were not available before Pique’s press time).
Long a rarity in the Whistler Valley, in 2023, grizzly bears cruised local neighbourhoods, disrupted marathons, visited local parks, and set up camp for long stretches near an elementary school.
And the uptick in reports has prompted new discussions at Whistler’s municipal hall.
The Resort Municipality of Whistler’s aim is to reduce conflict between humans and bears, while supporting safe habits and co-existence with wildlife, a communications official said, adding local officials take guidance from the COS on how to address conflict.
“Given that we are seeing more grizzlies, we have been working on additions to our response plan and mitigation strategy,” they said.
“Along with the COS and the Whistler Bear Advisory Committee, we’ve updated our overall Bear Response Plan to incorporate response and communication around grizzlies that enter the Whistler Valley. We’ve also completed an initial review of the Grizzly Bear Conflict Mitigation Strategy, which was originally developed with the province, wildlife biologists and the RCMP.”
The next step will be taking that work to the province for further review, they added.
“There are developments happening, but no updates we can share at this time,” they said. “We look forward to sharing our updates when everything is finalized.”
Despite his insane, death-defying instincts, it wasn’t a grizzly that eventually killed Hurtubise, or one of his absurd stunts, but a car crash in 2018.
Watching Project Grizzly it’s clear the guy was a kook—a character with at least a couple screws loose—but his respect and reverence for nature and animals is admirable, and something worth replicating.
“All of a sudden this calm comes overtop of my whole body, just flushes, right through the veins, just right out the feet, and it was just euphoric, just beautiful, because I knew, right then, I’m gonna die,” Hurtubise says in the film, describing the grizzly encounter that changed his life.
Locked in a silent staredown, Hurtubise slowly drew his two hunting knives.
“And I look and I say, ‘Alright old man, you’re gonna kill me sure as I’m standing there, because your fighting prowess is 50 times mine,’” he says.
“And I know I’m gonna die, but I am so pissed off with all the bullshit you put me through, I’m gonna take both of these [knives] before I go down, sure as God made little green apples, and I’m gonna shove ‘em right up your ass, and that’s a fact.”
A complicated relationship, indeed.
But on second thought, maybe the less we emulate Hurtubise, the better.
