27 Replies to “YOU get a Ski-Doo! and YOU get a Ski-Doo!”

  1. Houses are free too.
    Talked to an arctic Goose Guide at the sportsman show and we all had a laugh when he had to explain that “not all Canadians get a free house when they get married” to a young Indian that thought Canada was the same all over.

  2. That’s not uncommon to see on any reserve. Leave them on the ice at the end of winter so you don’t have to bother storing them off season.

    1. Yup a very familiar story. When it stops running request another one free , since the gov views anyone living full-time on a reserve as “wards of the government”.

      1. Leaving them on the ice is a standard gouge, to the point that a commercial freighter’s owner decided there was money to be made fishing them up. The ship dropped anchor in Iqaluit (Frobisher Bay) harbour and sent the boats out with grappling irons to fish the harbour bottom. They hooked a couple and were hauling them aboard the freighter when an RCMP cutter pulled-up alongside – “Those are property of the Government of Canada. Put ’em back!”

        I’m hoping the change to “Nunavut”, for which the natives got autonomy and surrendered their native rights, puts an end to this…

  3. l read stories about our northrn indigenous chopping open walls of the free houses so as to roar up the ramp and park the also free tracked vehicle.
    interesting to see such direct methodology in that adverse environment.

  4. What has no cost has no value. This is one of biggest flaws of socialism. And of social benefits.

    1. It’s the same with Healthcare. People don’t realize thr cost of our “free” healthcare. Close to half of every Provincial budget is spent/mismanaged on healthcare. The Feds stopped paying their promised 50% decades ago.

  5. My dad worked in the Arctic on the DEW Line for Federal Electric and told me when they shut down a base, they would bring in a D-9, bulldoze the entire place and leave the D-9 sitting on top of the hole they buried the buildings and materials in. I remember many years later that the locals apparently claimed a D-9 and suddenly the US got possessive with it and there was a legal kerfuffle over who owned it. Oh and Biden just left billions of dollars worth of equipment for the Taliban. It’s only (taxpayer’s) money, after all.

    1. You won’t remember “Ma Murray” who was a very outspoken journalist back in the day. She lived in Fort St John at one point when the Alaska Highway was being built, and was outspokenly horrified when – at the end of the project – the US Army burned or buried all their left-over supplies instead of leaving them to a region which was not well-off and could really have used said supplies.

  6. There is free housing on the rez. I have never heard of a free snow machine. The rez guys I know all pay if they want a machine. They don’t pay taxes.

  7. This was true when I was in Yellowknife 30 years ago. The indians would run skidoos over calm open water to attempt to cross a section. If things didn’t go well, the skidoo would sink, and they’d get another one from the gov’t sooner or later.

  8. An electrician I know of frequently works on Manitoba reserves. In one instance, he was sent to investigate a potentially faulty furnace, as the family complained that the house was always cold in winter. There was nothing wrong with the furnace, but the house did seem unusually cold. When he opened the bathroom door, he found a large hole cut in the wall right above the bathtub, which was full of water. It turns out that the family had horses, and they thought this was a handy way to water them in winter.

    1. It is also one of the reasons we’re loosing so many polar bears, the rubber, canvas, metal tracks on the doos create havoc with the bears digestive track, not like their customary diet of seal with the occassional Inuit hunter and his dog team thrown in.

    2. They are and this is cultural appropriation – just like the wheel, light bulb, and written language.

    3. “I thought Ski-Doos were manifestations of white supremacy.”

      They actually are. Just not the way that is usually meant.

  10. Reparations … are a long term ongoing operation. That! is the TRUTH … now it’s time for some reconciliation

  11. The floor of Great Slave Lake is littered with free snowmobiles provided by the government. Anyone who has ever lived in Yellowknife can confirm that.

    1. What win-win. You get the gimme a cheque vote up north and lots of extra snow machine manufacturing in Kwee-bec. Taxpayers? Hmmm.

  12. I was having my boat serviced at a marina near a reserve, the yard was littered with medium sized fishing boats, when queried the owner responded, “that at the end of the season the
    indigenous owners dropped them off and order a new one, all paid for by the tax payer”.

  13. I would guess that they are limited to the “ski-doo” brand. Ie: manufactured in Quebec by bombardier. What a cozy arrangement that would be. Do we think the government gets a volume discount? More likely they pay a premium. Then bombardier would have extra money on hand. You know, to donate to political campaigns and such…

  14. Seems like an economic opportunity for somebody who, for starters, has some self-respect.

  15. Heh…they should fire up a ride program on the trails the same day the liquor plane hits town.

  16. I used to take school photos along the James Bay coast, as far north as Peawanuk. After school, the kids would pull siding off the houses for fun. A teacher I talked to told me how the students were indignant when they saw a photo of a high end neighborhood in Toronto. “Why don’t we get nice houses like these?” They didn’t believe the teacher when he explained that people paid for them.

  17. It has to be over forty years since spouse worked up Baffin Island way (or near offer) but we still have the photo of the ski-doos all sitting out on the sea ice waiting to sink. This particular scam has been going on for a long time.

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