Q. Is the snowblower a Canadian innovation?
A. The snowblower, that great preventer of backaches is a Canadian invention. Its creator was Arthur Sicard, a Montreal-area farm boy-turned entrepreneur, who tired of having his milk spoil when the roads to market were frequently blocked by snow drifts.
In the late 1800s he experimented with a variety of snow removal techniques - including scrapers and V-shaped plows attached to automobiles - all to no avail. His idea for a snowblower was sparked by a farm threshing machine, which consisted of revolving metal "worms" and a fan which blew chopped-up straw up a pipe into a strawstack.
Sicard invested his meager savings in a truck with primitive worms and a blower. It worked on small drifts but broke down on larger ones. When Sicard left farming for the construction business, the idea went on hold until 20 years later when he owned his own company and had enough cash to return to his idea.
With stronger gasoline engines on the market, he sank $40,000 into his first hand-built blower and it rumbled onto the streets of Montreal in 1924. He patented his idea in the late 1920s and sold his first machine for $13,000 through his own incorporated company. He sold machines to the Quebec department of highways, the city of Montreal and the St. Hubert airport and eventually his workforce increased to 160 as production jumped to 56 units a year.
Sicard died of a heart attack in 1946, just as his Sicard snowblowers were becoming familiar sights across North America.