Mishap leads to invention.

Contractor Jean-Yves Godin had not planned to become an inventor. It happened quite unexpectedly. He was reversing a lawn tractor out of a pickup truck when the machine dislodged the two planks he had been using as a ramp. The tractor toppled, tossing him upside down. Godin hit the ground, hard and painfully, he recalls.

"I fell backwards (off the tractor) and for three months could hardly walk," Godin says. "I said, 'there's got to be a better way to load a machine.'"

Godin, owner of Godin Enterprises, invented that better way - a patented, folding ramp, called the Get-In Ramp. Made of laminated hardwood and high-grade steel, it can be used to safely and easily load snowmobiles, all-terrain vehicles, snowblowers and yes, lawn tractors.

Compact and versatile, the award-winning invention has also moved golf carts, 45-gallon drums, large truck tires and even furniture.

With the help of his sons Yvan and Patrick, Godin and his wife Francoise manufactured the Get-In Ramp in a shop at the rear of their home in Kearns, a former gold mining hamlet near the Quebec border in northeastern Ontario.

"It's a family operation," Godin says. "If we have too much work, we hire local people, like students in the summer, for a few days to help us catch up."

The ramp weighs about 23 kilograms. When folded for storage or transport, it measures 10 x 15 centimetres and is 2.3 metres long. It fits in the back of a pickup truck with the tailgate shut and takes less than a minute to unfold as a 1.2 x 1.8-metre ramp, Godin says. It also comes equipped with chains to fasten it securely to a pickup truck or trailer.

Godin Enterprises has manufactured and sold about 4,000 Get-In Ramps. The family has a small network of dealers in Kirkland Lake, New Liskeard, Elliot Lake, Timmins and Quebec who sell the product for $199 to $229.

"We've sold many of them," says Robert Trudel, owner of R&R Towing and Service Ltd., Your Honda Dealer, in Chaput Hughes, a suburb of Kirkland Lake.

"(The Get-In Ramp is one of our good sellers. It's very useable. You can use it for snowmobiles, four-wheelers, snowblowers," Trudel says. "Folded down, they fit in the back of your half-tonne. They work well."

The ramp captured first prize for original inventions at a 1995 trade show in Val-d'Or, Quebec. Up against 800 other exhibits, it captured a bronze medal at the 1997 INPEX inventor's expo in Pittsburgh, Pa. It won first place in the fun category of the 1998 Princess Auto Inventors' Fair in Winnipeg, Man. The invention has also won an award from the Canadian Industrial Innovation Centre in Waterloo, Ont.

The Godins market the ramp themselves. It generates a lot of interest at trade shows, but the family would like to drum up even more, he says.