They look part snowmobile, part magic bus, their rounded edges and circular windows reminiscent of a ship or a submarine.
The all-terrain snow machines known in Manitoba as Bombardiers haven’t been manufactured since the 1970s, but they remain a common sight along the frozen shores of the Interlake region.
In the RM of St. Laurent, the big machines are seen as the ultimate ice-fishing vehicle, and an important part of the community’s cultural fabric.
“Some people call us the capital of Bombardiers, and the Métis capital of, at least, the country,” said RM Coun. Moe Leclair.
“You come to St. Laurent, you’re going to see some Bombardiers,” he said. “It’s a given.”
Pronounced here as Bom-bah-Deers, Leclair says as many as 50 of them can be found in the little town’s yards and garages — so many the municipality even has road signs marking Bombardier Crossings.
“The Bombardiers are really important because the main industry here is fishing,” Leclair said, adding that the vast majority of the fishing community is Métis.
“It’s living off the land,” Leclair said, “and the guys here respect the lake.”
Bombardiers can take people where other vehicles won’t go: A pickup truck will get stuck in deep snow, while a snowmobile can’t haul hundreds of kilos of fish as a Bombardier can, Leclair says.
“It’ll get pretty chilly at -30 [C] on a Ski-Doo,” commercial ice fisher Mike Chartrand said. “Here, I’ve got a wood stove inside for heat,” grinning as he pointed to the Bombardier parked in his yard, a puff of smoke coming from its chimney, its chipping, light blue paint speckled with rust.
“She’s my baby.”
Born and raised in a Métis family in St. Laurent, Chartrand is proud to know his way around a Bombardier.
“My dad always had one, and I was always around him,” he said. “So it was just learn as I go.”
The predominately Métis fishing community in St. Laurent, Man., still uses Bombardier snow coaches — decades after they were made — as transportation and shelter to handle the harsh winter conditions on Lake Manitoba.
Chartrand beamed with pride as he revved up the engine and took our CBC crew for a tour, easily crossing frozen marshland and scaling stiff snow banks before chugging his way along the vast, jagged surface of an ice-covered Lake Manitoba.
It’s the same way his father and grandfathers used their Bombardiers when taking the rugged snow machines to check fishing holes, reopening them with a shovel and an auger. Chartrand steadily pulled the lines on his 100-metre nets to bring in a catch of pickerel, suckers and jackfish.
But while Bombardiers are known in the Interlake as the ultimate ice-fishing machine, they were invented early last century for a different reason.
The Bombardier was designed in 1937 in Valcourt, Que. , by Joseph-Armand Bombardier, who got the idea after his child died during a blizzard. The family couldn’t reach the hospital because, in those days, there was no public snow-clearing of roads.
The Bombardier “snow coaches” were initially used as school buses and ambulances, and to deliver mail and supplies.
Mass production began in the 1940s, when the snow coaches were put to work in the war effort. They later gained popularity among utility, mining and logging crews because of their ability to handle challenging terrain.
However, sales dropped dramatically by the end of the ’40s, when municipal snow clearing became the norm. Attention shifted to Bombardier’s newer invention, the Ski-Doo, and the company stopped making its snow coaches by the late 1970s.
The Bombardiers that are still around require a lot of maintenance, including Chartrand’s 1957 model.
“You’ve got to look at the belting, make sure it’s not too cracked,” he said, going over a checklist of repairs he makes at the end of each fishing season. “You’ll be taking off the tracks, taking off all the wheels, going through all the bearings.
“You do not have time to have problems in the winter.”
Chartrand says he buys only new parts, many of them custom made, such as the new metal doors specially crafted by a buddy. The engine is a new Chevy V8.
“If you’re a handy person and can do a lot of the work yourself, good,” Chartrand said. “But if you gotta pay someone to put it all together, the parts are expensive,” he said, drawing out that word for emphasis.
Chartrand says the expense and work are worth it, since the connection to the lake and his Métis heritage is invaluable.
“Some people I know have good jobs and are doing well, but I’m the lucky one,” Chartrand said as he pulled the machine back into his driveway.
“There’s nothing better than a Bombardier.”
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