History and Distinctions

History

The story of Contant begins in the early 1940s, when Gaston Contant founded this family business involved in carrying out deliveries to local farms. The rural and farming communities in the Montreal region faced a serious problem: the many big snowfalls and drifts which covered country roads and rendered them impassable for days on end. Buried under the snow, Gaston acquired his first equipment, and offered his snow-removal services to others in the region.

With the development of the Montreal region, and the resulting increase in traffic volume in the previously bucolic countryside, the need to remove ever-greater volumes of snow became a more and more pressing need. This required equipment able to efficiently plow and remove mountains of densely compacted snow and ice, as well as trucks to transport them to the nearest designated site. On-site, even more powerful machinery was needed to receive and process all the arriving snow. In 1990, Gaston Contant created a new division of Contant Inc. to respond to this need for reliable equipment able to remove large volumes of snow.

Building on the qualifications and knowledge acquired by Bombardier over many years of experience in the aviation industry, the Contant family has become, over time, the premier supplier of large-volume snow removal equipment in North America.

During the 1940s and 1950s, the hardware store, which occupied the front area of the business and which also housed the region's fire truck, was transformed into a Bombardier Ski-Doo dealership. By then the Ski-Doo had become a necessity for wintertime transportation. Sale by sale, Gaston made his mark as the number-one Ski-Doo dealer in Quebec. Since 1970, Contant has been official supplier of Bombardier Recreational Products (BRPs).

Today, with over 60 years of experience, Contant counts three independent, full-service locations: the flagship dealership in St-François de Laval, in Mirabel alongside Autoroute 15 North on the Quad/Snowmobile trail, and our new outlet in Ste-Agathe. At each you will find all the BRPs, such as Ski-Doo snowmobiles, Sea-Doo marine craft, Can-Am ATVs and Spyder roadsters, as well as all the accessories and apparel imaginable for outdoors enthusiasts and professionals, not to mention the unmatched after-sales service which has earned Contant its stellar reputation through the decades.