Like Ahab before him, Troy Hurtubise obsessively stalks the Great Other, donning 147 pounds of homemade armor, suffering countless test-pummelings, and sliding into bankruptcy as he awaits the ultimate showdown

By Stephen Smith

Outside a pool hall in North Bay, Ontario, three biker types are beating the tar out of what appears to be a tall red-and-white robot. They use a baseball bat, a splitting ax, possibly a pool cue, though they're swinging so fiercely it's hard to tell. Thwack! Thwack! Blows to the chest, the knees, the shoulders. You can see their sneers deepen as they clobber harder.

The robot stands erect, motionless, its black cyclops eye making it look slightly addled. Finally, a hit to the sternum sends it crashing backward to the ground — slowly, stiffly, like a felled oak. As it sprawls on the asphalt, one especially determined assailant continues to land brutal chops to the shins, leaning in until his ax handle splinters.

The robot lies still.

Victorious, the attackers help their victim to its feet and gently pry off the top half of the robot's shell, revealing a small, wiry man. He runs his hand through his short-cropped hair. He laughs, a bit maniacally. His Imperial Storm Trooper legs dance an arthritic little jig. Another successful mauling in the name of science.

In pursuit of his off-kilter dream — creating a suit of armor that can withstand the attack of a grizzly bear — Troy Hurtubise has endured much: Slugs in the chest from a 12-gauge shotgun at a range of 20 feet. Falling, on purpose, off the edge of the 150-foot-high Niagara Escarpment. Assaults from burly friends and relatives all too willing to cuff him repeatedly with road picks, knives, bows and arrows, two-by-fours. Eighteen times he has stood in the path of a three-ton pickup doing 30 miles per hour, and 18 times the truck has knocked him from here to next week. On several occasions, he has stood at attention while a 350-pound log, winched 30 feet up in a tree, swung down broadside to topple him like a human bowling pin.

In each of these encounters, Hurtubise explains over oil-slicked restaurant coffee, he was safe inside his invention: the Ursus Mark VI Bearproof Suit, 147 pounds of titanium alloy, rubber, plastic, and chain mail standing seven feet, two inches tall. "I sustained a headache one time coming down the mountain," he says proudly. "And a bruise on my right arm. After all the tests, that's it."

On the surface, it's hard to see just what necessity mothered Hurtubise's invention. He is a 33-year-old unemployed scrap-metal dealer living with his wife and four-year-old son in North Bay, Ontario, 2,000 comfortable miles from the nearest grizzly habitat. Yet the self-described "close-quarter bear researcher" has spent a decade and $110,000 of his own money assembling and modifying four versions of his suit. "Grizzlies have a lot to offer science," he says, "but you can't get in close to the bear. You die."

Bear-proof suit scares off grizzly

When confronted by Hurtubise in the Ursus Mark VI suit, the bear smelled a human, but saw an alien. "There's no grizzly that's going to come near you in that suit," the bear handler told him, after he spent 10 minutes in a cage with the cowering animal.

Hurtubise has been tinkering with his bear-proof garment for 15 years and has been the subject of a television documentary and the recipient of an IgNobel prize. The grizzly test was supposed to be the first live encounter, and was part of a trio of try-outs in British Columbia, Canada.

Tooth and claw

In the first test, the suit had to go it alone, without Hurtubise inside, with a fearsome opponent - a 545-kg (1200-lb) male Kodiak bear. The suit was placed into the cage of the giant bear, to get him accustomed to it. Eventually, the bear began to sniff the contraption, fashioned from steel, titanium, chainmail and rubber, and then proceeded to jump on it.

"You could hear the metal straining," says Hurtubise. "He started to investigate the thing with claw and tooth."

Though it ripped off chunks of rubber, all was well until the bear began to shred the protective chainmail and was called off by the handler. Hurtubise has learned that you should never skimp on chainmail. "I should have used shark chainmail," he now laments. "Instead, I sent away for butcher's chainmail from France."

Without effective chainmail, the bear handler decided not to allow an attack by the Kodiak. But he did permit Hurtubise to take on the smaller female grizzly.

Bear breath

Finally, he went back in the ring with the Kodiak - but no contact was allowed. It took the bear a while to approach but soon enough it was just six inches away. "I could feel his breath coming through my visor," says Hurtubise. "I was terrified."

Nonetheless, he plans to face the beast again - with full contact - in spring 2002, once he has installed the proper chainmail.

And he has decided that Ursus Mark VII will have to have a redesign, to look a little more human so it does not scare off the grizzlies. "I'm just glad to get home in one piece," he says. "I've got Christmas to look forward to."