Joseph-Armand Bombardier was born in Valcourt, Quebec, in 1907, and dabbled in mechanics at an early age. By the time he was fifteen, he had built an all-terrain vehicle prototype designed to be equally reliable on soft ground and snow. He developed experience by reading, taking notes, and repairing whatever he found, until he opened his own garage at the age of nineteen and repaired cars.
He continued working on his snow vehicle prototype during the winter. He became motivated to succeed after a blizzard in which his young son developed peritonitis and died because he could not be brought to the nearest hospital. Bombardier came up with the solution of steering by skis in front of a tracked drive.
Bombardier sold the first “B7” (Bombardier 7-passenger) model snowmobiles during the winter of 1936-37 and the B7s were well received. In 1940, he built a new factory capable of producing more than 200 vehicles a year. A new B12 model was made available in 1941, and Bombardier also modeled a C18 to serve the public as a school bus. Bombardier built over 3000 B12s and C18s.
Bombardier eventually offered his expertise to the Canadian government, and began producing specialized military vehicles for the Allies. He also produced specialized logging and mining operation vehicles, called the “Muskeg.”
In 1948, the Quebec government began clearing snow from secondary roads, and business declined. Bombardier built smaller snowmobiles during the 1950s, developing a new market for recreational products for one or two people. The Ski-Doo was an analog of a motorcycle instead of a car or truck, and was propelled by a single track as wide as the whole machine, behind the steerable skis.
In 1959, Bombardier launched the Ski-Doo. The snowmobile was originally meant to be called “Ski-Dog,” but a printing accident misspelled the name as “Ski-Doo.” Bombardier saw the mistake as fortuitous and decided to move forward with the mistake as a new trademark for his company. By 1963, more than 8000 snowmobiles were being sold annually. Within a decade, the Ski-Doo had transformed the social life of Inuit and Arctic communities, creating a demand for gasoline, oil, and spare parts. Later, in 2007, the Ski-Doo would be ranked 17th in CBC Television’s The Greatest Canadian Invention. Though competing snowmobile producers threatened to overwhelm the Bombardier family in the 1970s, the company survived and expanded.
In 1963, Bombardier also created the division Roski Ltd. to supply composite parts for the Ski-Doo assembly line. By the early 1970s, Roski produced and assembled the first generation of Sea-Doo personal watercrafts that had been developed by Bombardier’s engineering department. Roski also gained experience in marine construction by producing Bombardier sailboats. Roski diversified by manufacturing composite parts using contact molding technology and by being one of the first North American companies to make large-scale use of liquid resin injection and high-pressure molding. In the 1970s, Roski acquired filament winding technology. From 1970 to 1985, Roski capitalized on technological breakthroughs, leading to expertise in parts for the marine and ground transportation industries, as well as in recreation, construction, and corrosion-resistance applications.
Bombardier died of cancer in 1964. He was inducted into the Canadian Science and Engineering Hall of Fame.
In 2000, Bombardier was honored by the Canadian government with his image on a postage stamp. Quebec named Autoroute 55 “autoroute Joseph-Armand Bombardier” between Stanstead and Autoroute 20 near Drummondville. In Antarctica, the Bombardier Glacier is also named after him.