by V. Paul Reynolds

There was a day when Ski-Doo was simply a generic name for a snowmobile. Early on, as I recall, Ski-Doo was the only game in town. In the early 1960s you went “ski-dooing,” not snowmobiling. The machines were the invention of Canadian Joseph-Armand Bombardier. Although the inventor worked many years trying to come up with a snow-going machine, the Ski-Doo didn’t hit the commercial U.S. market until 1959.