Places, Traditions and Discoveries · Drawing 40
An idea that glides over snow
1959 - the small snowmobile is introduced
At Valcourt, Joseph-Armand Bombardier developed a small snowmobile. Today, skis and a track help snowmobiles travel over snow.
Look together
Can you find the skis and the track?
An idea to try
Your child draws an invented vehicle for a terrain of their choice, then explains which parts would help it move.
For the adult reading along
A little more to discover
The Musée de l'ingéniosité J. Armand Bombardier tells the story of vehicles adapted to snow. It presents a small-snowmobile prototype from 1958 and a model marketed in 1959. This history includes trials followed by changes to vehicles and their parts over time.
The drawing shows an imagined contemporary snowmobile with front skis and a track. It is not the 1959 model. Find the different parts and discuss the problem inventors wanted to solve: travelling over snow. Then imagine another vehicle adapted to a particular terrain, without discussing how to drive it.
Sources and context
These links lead to other websites. Explore them with an adult. Source titles appear in their original language; some linked pages are in French.
Source review: 2026-09-12. Illustrations simplify places and scenes; they are not historical documents.