About The Circle:

I came up with the idea of writing a story about the Windigo in 1990 at a screenwriter's workshop sponsored by The Summer Film Institute. I even came up with the name for the lead Native character. I tried different scenarios and plots; they were passable, good even. But I didn't like them. I wrote many drafts, treatments ... and trashed every one of them.

And then one day, I remember it was November 21, 1992. It was a Saturday. I was home in Maniwaki, having just completed another hectic week of school at Algonquin College in Ottawa. My dad was making chili that day, like he did every Saturday during the winter months. I was leafing through a copy of Reader's Digest, looking for something interesting to read. There was this story about two guys who rented a helicopter to fly to a remote section of mountain, somewhere in BC. The chopper met a sudden blizzard and went down. One man was injured in the crash. Now they're stuck up there, no radio, no food; no one knows they're there, and ... I don't recall the rest of the story.

But it came at me like a ton of bricks! The Windigo is a spirit that haunts the northern woodlands. The problem I was having in developing the story was that I was trying to bring the Windigo to civilization, into our back yards. How about, then, a plane crashes during a blizzard in the far north... and the survivors find themselves in Windigo's backyard. During a blizzard. What if this really did happen? How would we ever know? That's the premise I used, and when I started writing, the story took off and told itself. Since 1993, I've polished it up, and it's been complete since January 1998. But it's amazing, when I think about it now, that I struggled with how and where to properly set the story for two years.

In a nutshell, it's the story about a Native Indian pilot flying cargo up in the far north for a mining company, whose plane is forced down during a blizzard in no man's land. He leads the survivors in a forced march for an isolated geologist's cabin ... and the Windigo reappears according to legend. And hunts them down one by one. It was a hard story to write, because I wanted to bring humanness to it, and not let it run off and become a cheap scream story which it tried to do a few times. So it took 5 years to write, and then rewrite. I'm sure glad it's done.
 

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