Film Review: The Grizzly Project

by Alice Shirrell Kaswell

Project Grizzly
Documentary film, 72 minutes, 1996
Directed by Peter Lynch
Produced by Michael Allder
National Film Board of Canada
Video available from First Run Features (1-800-488-6652, www.firstrunfeatures.com)

Persistence, determination, obsession-these characteristics are present in many of our finest scientists, explorers, and other high achievers. No better exemplifies the breed than Troy James Hurtubise, a self-educated Canadian visionary who survived a grizzly bear encounter and thenceforth dedicated his intellect, energy, and engineering skill to designing a gigantic grizzly-proof suit of armor. The quest, the suit, the man and-by its absence-the bear, are documented in a movie called "Project Grizzly." It is partly nature film, partly bio-anthropological inquiry, partly engineering how-to lesson. It is riveting.

Hurtubise was twenty years old when his great moment of inspiration arrived, deep in the woods of northern British Columbia. Twenty is an age at which many great scientists are seized by their subject. The mind at twenty is subject, in some lucky individuals, to bouts of tremendous fertility and tenacity. Albert Einstein was such an individual, and it is wistfully instructive to imagine what would have resulted had he been attacked at that age by a grizzly bear, rather than taking up employment at the Swiss patent office.

Hurtubise spent seven years and, by his accounting, $150,000 in engineering and building a protective suit that would allow him to commune safely with the grizzly bear. The Ursus Mark VI is a 7 foot 2 inch (2.18 meters) tall device with a fireproof rubber exterior, titanium outer plates, internal chain mail, a Tek plastic inner shell, and an inner cushioning layer of air bags, a twin-fan ventilation system, a two-chamber headpiece with aluminum/titanium alloy shell, a pressure-sensitive, arm-mounted bite-bar strip to measure the biting power of a grizzly, and a voice-activated "black box" recording to document, should it be necessary, a catastrophic device failure.

Atypical for a bear researcher/engineer, Hurtubise is a talker. The film's director, Peter Lynch, had the good sense to allow Hurtubise and his colleagues to explain at full length (and then some) the inspiration, theory, and intent of their work.

Hurtubise is also a doer. We see various prototypes of the suit (with its inventor inside) being subjected to rigorous testing. It is rammed with a three ton truck. It is shot with a 12 gauge shotgun. It is hit with a 300 pound (136 kilogram) tree trunk that has been dropped from a height of 30 feet (9 meters). It is attacked by bikers armed with axes, planks, and baseball bats. It is pushed off an escarpment.

Project Grizzly goes on rather longer than it has to, but that is a tiny quibble on my part. I had never seen anything like it. I am quite sure you have never seen anything like it. This is a must-see, an improbably instructive don't-miss-it of a movie.

Troy Hurtubise models the suit which he hopes will allow him to commune safely with a grizzly bear.

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