PERSONAL PASSIONS: SNOWMOBILES
A primer on one of Canada’s beloved contributions to winter living By Alain Lajoie Alain Lajoie was a teacher in Northern Quebec for 28 years and an owner of five death tobaggans during that time.
In close to 30 years of snowmobiling, I’ve never
ice fishing or going out with our Cree culture teacher
ridden on a groomed track. Snowmobiles up north
to film him emptying a fishing net set under the ice
are essential to experiencing the land. I’ve ridden
or setting up traps at a beaver lodge.
at crazy speeds over a frozen James Bay – carefully in narrow paths on the way to a bush camp or to a beaver lodge or out of the village at night to get away from the street lamps – admiring the aurora borealis
In the north during spring time, you see trains of snowmobiles and sleds heading out over the ice as the camp’s families get ready for the spring Goose Break. They ride out and fly back by chartered
or just the millions of stars that are only visible away
helicopter at the end of the hunt. Once the ice
from population centres and their atmospheric and
breaks up, they travel by boat to retrieve their
light pollution.
snowmobiles.
Some of the best times I’ve had involved a bunch of
When I started snowmobiling, it wasn’t rare to finish
us heading out to a camp on one of the rivers to go
a weekend ride towing a broken-down snowmobile;
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