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Snowblower

© Don De Beyer

There was a dark and stormy night this week and it made me realize with much disappointment that even on the relatively mild west coast of Canada winter is about to arrive with force. While where I live is blessed with a relatively small amount of snow each year it is not the same everywhere.

If you travel about 1 hour east of Abbotsford, BC you will start to encounter all the snow you would every want. When I grew up in rural Ontario, I can remember snow piled higher than the bus I rode to school each day. They tried to clear the roads with truck and grader mounted plows but occasionally even these pieces of equipment where not enough. It was at these times that they had to resort to a Canadian invention, which is still in use today, the snow blower

A man by the name of Arthur Sicard who became frustrated by the difficulty of transporting milk from the farm to market developed the idea for the snowblower. The roots of the snowblower begin in the fields around his farm when he first saw a threshing machine. He realized that by utilizing the rotating blades used for threshing it was possible to build a similarly rotating blade, which would blow snow.

It wasn't until 1925 that Sicard who had left the farm and moved to Montreal was able to demonstrate a working and road clearing snowblower. This first snow machine was built on a truck body which the blower on the front and an auxiliary engine on the back. Over time the "Sicard Snow Remover Snowblower" was accepted and began being sold to various municipalities around Quebec.

The snowblower over the years has changed but the basic design still remains. A motor, PTO or hydraulics drives the unit. There are one, two or more augers used to chew up the snow and break it into manageable sizes. The snow is directed via a chute into a fan or blower. This blower scoops up some snow and throws it from the machine. Depending on the model it is possible to control the direction and to some degree the distance the snow it blown.

Snowblowers come in many different sizes and are used in a wide variety of industries. Many people will use a very small motor driven blower to clear their residential driveways and walkways. Larger tractor mounted units are used on the farm and within cities to move snow. Railways and airports will use snowblowers to keep the tracks clear and allow airport runways to remain usable.