Quixotic inventor Troy Hurtubise is rebooting his Project Grizzly, a curious crusade to build a RoboCop-looking protective suit to stand up to an angry bear.

The 52-year-old former Hamiltonian wants to take one more try at his lifetime goal, to go mano a grizzo in self-designed armour, and live to talk about it.

He's been working away in his North Bay workshop on an eighth version of a suit and he is also in discussions with a filmmaker to produce a sequel to the 1996 National Film Board cult classic Project Grizzly." That film is one of the most successful Canadian documentaries of all time.

Hurtubise - who was recently featured in a Spectator article about Hamilton's most colourful characters - says it's either now or never for him to prove that he can take on the fearsome beast.

Over the past few decades, he's spent hundreds of thousands of dollars developing different iterations of suits made of varying degrees of chain mail, galvanized steel, titanium, high-tech plastic, liquid rubber and duct tape.

He went bankrupt twice. But through it all he gained a dubious fame after his exploits were captured in the NFB movie by director Peter Lynch.

"This is my last adventure on the trail, man," he said. "This is it ... These suits weigh 150 pounds. At 55 or 60 years old, forget it. I wouldn't be able to do it."

It all started with a chance encounter with a grizzly when he was a boy. From there, he decided to develop a spray that hikers and campers could use to ward off bears. But as he thought more about the idea he realized it would have to be field tested. To field test, he would need some kind of protective suit.

So the suit became his focus of attention, putting it through all kinds of tests that included being run down by a pickup truck driven by his father, rolling off the side of cliff and being pummelled by bikers with baseball bats. A lot of those tests were done in Hamilton, in the King's Forest area. He lived in Hamilton for the first 24 years of his life.

And while he became well known across the country because of media broadcasting of videos he made, he never actually tried the suit with a grizzly in the wild.

"At 52, I have to know whether the suit will hold. It's one of the curiosity things. We tested the suit a lot of ways, but never went against the grizzly."

He is crowdfunding to try to raise $700,000 for the movie. Meanwhile, filmmaker Tony Wannamaker, who worked on the first documentary, is approaching networks and other funding agencies to try to strike a production deal

Hurtubise has been relatively quiet in recent years, but videos online about his adventures remain popular. One put together by The Spectator in 2007 has had more than 1.2 million views.

Wannamaker, who was cinematographer for the 72-minute "Project Grizzly" documentary, says he believes a second film will be successful because he feels Hurtubise is such a compelling subject.

"He really galvanizes attention. There is no question. He is the genuine article and I love him for it," he said.

"I constantly get feedback from producers and broadcasters. The film is popular in the States, in Europe, in Japan. Film students study it," he said. "People wonder what Troy is up to. What is our Don Quixote doing? What windmill is he battling this week?"

While Hurtubise wants to jump headfirst into a confrontation with a grizzly, Wannamaker says such an encounter will have to be done in a way to control the danger to Hurtubise.

"I love his enthusiasm but we have to consider liability."

Also supporting the venture is Hurtubise's wife, Lori. She works as an administrator for a courier company, and does marketing for Troy in her spare time.

They met about 25 years ago in North Bay in a Country Style Donuts shop and it didn't take long for Troy to tell her about his passion in life.

"I thought he was kind of nuts, to be honest with you," she says.

But there was something intriguing about him and they ended up getting married a year later. They have a son and they have been together ever since.

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She says the key to the success of their relationship is that "we are complete opposites."

"I am reality-based. He is the dreamer. He likes to get out and do stuff."

As for his latest plan, she says, "I have faith in his suit."