The blood of the highlands runs strong in the hills and valleys of Cape Breton. Conal MacNeil, from the line of the Barra MacNeils, is tall and gangly, with brownish-red hair and a bushy goatee. He always looks like he was just in a fight, always sporting various bruises and cuts. His fiddle is almost as battered as he is, but he still manages to coax a decent sound from it. He can play the harmonica and accordion too, all well enough to generate some income busking in subway stations, though not well enough to make a living.

His family has lived on Cape Breton Island for six generations, arriving from Scotland on the good ship Hector in 1773. (The Hector was closer to a wreck, but it got them across the ocean.)

During the many upheavals that sent highlanders across the world in waves, Garou blood mixed in with the diaspora communities, often latent until a genetic mixture or an outside stimulus brought it to the fore.

Like many youth on Cape Breton, Conal spent much of his time partying and getting into trouble. He was often the fiddler at kitchen parties, both for his friends, and for older folks. When he wasn’t partying, he spent his time driving driving around the island, stopping at the causeway and looking south to the world beyond. He never crossed it, though.

Like many of his generation, he was forced to leave his family home in search of work. The last coal mines closed in 2001, leaving little work for so-called ‘unskilled’ labour. Alberta and the oil patch called, looking for bodies to feed the relentless expansion of heavy oil extraction and the tar sands.

It was in northern Alberta, working as a driver and labourer in the vast strip mines of the oil sands, that Conal felt the first stirrings of the beast within. The utter wrongness of the mining, the pollution, and the death of animals and their habitats attracted Umbral terrors, and in his dreams he experienced life as a wolf, attacking terrors in the night.

The first time Conal changed, he was terrified. He had no real knowledge of the Garou, just what he had gleaned from werewolves coming from lurid books and movies. He was only barely in control of his shape, and for much of the next two hours, he was little more than a passenger in his body, watching as the loosed garou went on the hunt.

Eight people died that night, oil company managers, engineers, and an executive. His actions brought him to the attention of the Black Spiral Dancers, and the next day he fled, crossing into the United States illegally along the Alberta-Montana border, and making his way to New York, where he hoped to lose himself.

In the course of his travels across the United States, he came to terms with Garou heritage, though he still knows little about it. He met people along the way that recognized him for what he was, and gave him aid and filled in some of the blanks. Most of those who gave him succor were Kin, rather than Garou. The few run-ins he had with actual Garou tended to go badly. He had little knowledge of the social conventions of Garou society, and missed the cues that would have told him to back down, to show proper respect. He did learn some lessons, but he resented it, and the Garou, especially the purebloods, who lorded their ancestry over him.