Project Grizzly inventor dead after crash
Troy Hurtubise lived life of dreams, desperation
He was famously known as the wildly eccentric inventor obsessed with developing an armoured grizzly bear protection suit.
Former Hamiltonian Troy Hurtubise spent countless hours and hundreds of thousands of dollars coming up with various versions of the suit that looked like a cross between Robo-Cop and the Michelin Man. He was featured in the cult-classic movie “Project Grizzly” by Peter Lynch, and Homer Simpson even parodied him on an episode of “The Simpsons.”
But beneath it all was a deeply troubled man who fought with depression, failure and financial problems and very well might have deliberately killed himself by swerving his Chevy Cavalier into an oncoming fuel tanker truck on a highway outside North Bay in broad daylight.
“I just hope that whatever decision he made and however it came about that he is not suffering anymore — that he somehow found the peace he couldn’t find in life,” his widow Lori Hurtubise said in an exclusive interview with The Spectator.
Troy, 54, died at 1 p.m. June 17 in fiery collision on Highway 17 when his vehicle collided head-on with the truck. The truck driver was not seri--
ously injured.
Lori said the OPP told her there had been an accident with Troy’s car but they were not certain whether the sole occupant inside the vehicle was him. It took days to positively identify his remains from dental records.
Police would not tell her who was at fault in crossing the line but she knows he was upset before the accident.
Two weeks before, Troy moved out of his home and was living with his mother “because he was struggling with personal issues in his life,” Lori said.
On the day of the collision, he dropped by his home. Thinking Lori was inside, but not coming to the door, he broke a window of the door to get in.
“He must have come in and saw that no one was there and he left to go on the highway and the accident happened literally 20 minutes later,” she said. “I don’t think it was anger as much as desperation, he was trying to reach out and not knowing what to do.
“I know he was struggling these last couple of years just with life in general,” she said. His last protection suit was in a pawnshop, a funding drive for a sequel film was not working out, and various other inventions were going nowhere commercially.
Hurtubise lived in North Bay, but grew up on the east Mountain in Hamilton where he developed a passion for inventing as a teenager. His heroes included inventor Nikola Tesla, martial artist/actor Bruce Lee and actor/ director Clint Eastwood.
After a chance encounter with a grizzly bear on a camping trip, he decided his destiny was to create a bear-repellent spray. But he realized such a product would have to be field tested with bears in the wild, so he redirected his attention to developing a protective suit to allow encounters at close range.
From there the mission got further sidetracked with a series of outlandish bear suit fieldtesting experiments that included being pushed off Hamilton Mountain, struck by a pickup truck driven by his dad, and pummelled by bikers with baseball bats.
The videos were often featured on television, coming to the attention of Lynch, who put together the two-hour documentary in 1996. “The Simpsons” TV show jumped on the bear bandwagon with an episode that had Homer try to develop a bear-proof suit called the BearBuster 5000. It was an obvious tip of the helmet to Troy and his suit designs, which carried such names as the Ursus Mark V.
Videos of his exploits went on to become viral hits on YouTube. One put together by The Spectator in 2007 has had nearly 1.3 million views, by far the most popular video ever produced by the newspaper.
Through it all, he lost interest in coming up with the bear spray and he tried to market the suit for other applications, such as for military use. But there were no takers.
The last time Troy was interviewed by The Spectator was in 2016, at a time when he was trying to raise money for a sequel to the “Project Grizzly” film with Tony Wannamaker, who was involved in the 1996 “Project Grizzly” production.
It turned out that after decades of development, Troy had never actually tried out the suit with a grizzly. The sequel was planned to be the opportunity to do that, but a Gofundme effort did not go well.
Also in 2016, The Spectator nominated Troy as one of the top 12 “Steel City Characters” of all time.
Since then he has worked on numerous other inventions to deal with issues ranging from male pattern baldness to rainforest deforestation. In one YouTube video he demonstrated a type of ray gun that, he claimed, would grow hair if pointed at a human scalp. The same machine, he said, with an accessory attachment could be pointed at vegetable seeds to make them growable in limited light and water.
From this Hurtubise claimed rainforest trees would not have to be cleared to make way for agriculture. Vegetables and trees could grow side by side, he said, therefore eliminating the need to cut down trees.
None of the claims offered independent or credible corroboration.
For Lori, she says, “the only thing my son and I can think right now is that it is a huge loss to us. I thought I was going to grow old with this man. I’ve been with him since I was 19 years old.”
Lori met him in a North Bay coffee shop. Troy was passing through town. They dated and after a couple of years got married. Soon after, their only son Brett was born.
“I remember shortly after I first met him, he showed me a video of him being thrown off Hamilton escarpment. I said, ‘all right, that’s a little odd.’
“But I fell in love with him and I knew exactly what I was marrying,” she said. “He was captivating. He kept me interested. That’s for sure.
“So many people out there have dreams but are too afraid to chase after them. But not Troy.” He did what others were too afraid to do. He followed his dreams.”
Troy didn’t want a funeral but Lori says a small celebration of life will take place for family and friends at some point soon.