Ski-Dogs, Pol-Cats, and the Mechanization of Winter: The Development of Recreational Snowmobiling in North America

In April 1959, inventor-entrepreneur Joseph-Armand Bombardier boarded a bush plane to a missionary outpost in northern Ontario. On the plane with him were an old friend whose son served as priest for the native peoples and a new machine of Bombardier’s devising called the “Ski-Dog.” Three years earlier, Bombardier had received a letter from another missionary, entreating his firm, L’Auto-Neige Bombardier (Bombardier Snow Vehicles), to produce an economical and reliable means of winter travel. Through decades of research, development, and production, Bombardier’s company had commercialized large oversnow and overground vehicles, but an economical, maneuverable snow sled had eluded it. By the late 1950s, however, the final piece in the economic and technical puzzle fell into place, as light, powerful, and inexpensive gasoline engines became available from several European manufacturers. When Bombardier and his staff applied themselves to the problem, they devised a machine that incorporated one of these engines in a simple and sophisticated system of power transmission, traction, and control. They called it “Ski-Dog” because it would replace traditional sled dogs, and this trip to the northern mission was its final preproduction test.

Bombardier had the 350-pound machine unloaded from the aircraft and took priests and villagers for rides. Then he turned it over to them, and for the next seventy-two hours, day and night, the Ski-Dog rode over fields and down valleys, up steep hills and across frozen lake beds. Everyone in the village drove it at least once. It never broke down, stopping only for fuel. A satisfied Bombardier boarded his plane home, leaving the snowmobile behind. ¹

Soon there would be thousands more such machines, then millions, and winter in snow country would never be the same. The snowmobile transformed northern winters with faster, easier travel and by making the experience so enjoyable that it became a form of recreation. In the case of some arctic peoples, snowmobiling gave them even more mobility in winter than in summer, enhancing communication among villages and between villages and towns. With snowmobiles to reach the grounds and bring back the game, hunting and fishing takes increased. Further south, people got out and about, visiting friends and taverns, making “snofaris” into the winter landscape, racing, ice fishing at distant ponds, taking themselves and their machines where they had never before been in winter and where machines had never been at all. Sounds of civilization echoed throughout the forest. As one commentator observed a decade after development of the Ski-Dog, “except for those places where no one ever lives or goes, the great white silence is broken forever.” ²

The Ski-Dog—which soon acquired the more evocative name “Ski-Doo”—caught people’s interest as no snow vehicle had before. ³ An economical device intended for fun as much as utility, it brought the conception of the powered snow vehicle back to where it began decades before. First developed near the end of the nineteenth century as a sporting device, the snow vehicle had since become a utilitarian means of carriage, exploration, and mass transit. Bombardier himself contributed significantly to this trend with the auto-neiges that his company produced beginning in the 1930s, vehicles used for mail delivery, school busing, and military transport.

But the market for such vehicles was inherently limited, and the advent of regular road snowplowing in the 1940s and 1950s undercut sales further. Although the Ski-Doo was not the first powered sled offered for sale in North America, its maneuverability and quickness broke the utilitarian mold and resuscitated a conception of snowmobiling that had been largely dormant for decades.

Acceptance of Ski-Doo and its followers was not straightforward. How to convince large numbers of winter stay-at-homes to abandon their fireplaces and television sets for the frigid, sometimes dangerous pursuit of oversnow fun? How to find places they could ride without antagonizing their neighbors or interfering with other outdoor activities? Safety, noise, and environmental issues soon arose, all with the potential to disrupt...