You can find strange Northerns in the oddest places. The July 1961 issue of Worlds of IF had a short two page article by Ted Sturgeon about the Windigo called “The BEM called Windigo”. Sturgeon doesn’t really bring in bug-eyed monsters but the title is catchy.
Sturgeon references a study by Morton I Teicher, which is similar to another book, Windigo Pyschosis. These works discuss the idea of the Windigo, not as a supernatural being or even a cryptoid creature but as an illness. In the winter, after suffering through the cold, loneliness and starvation, the mind breaks and the afflicted becomes a cannibal. He retells of one case of a woman who felt she was turning windigo and willingly was burned to death.
There are earlier works of fiction and nonfiction that show this including Mary Hartwell Catherwood’s The Chase of Saint-Castin (1894). This includes a chapter called “The Windigo” that has a native woman chased by those who would kill her by burning her alive. Catherwood also mentions that windigos have a rank odor that identifies them.
In the newspapers of 1879 there was a famous RCMP case in Alberta featuring a native man named Swift Runner. He was arrested for the murder and eating of his entire family.
Such examples give writers like Algernon Blackwood plenty to work from in creating their terrible visions of Canada’s northern woods. The Windigo is Canada’s most famous addition to the Monster Hall of Fame.