Yellowknife (Jan 05/05) - Scott Dowdall, killed in a tragic snowmobile accident just three days after Christmas, perished doing what he loved, his family said as they gathered to remember the 38-year-old stepfather.

"Scott always said that if he died snowmobiling, he would be happy," his mother, Sandi Dowdall recalled.

"That is a small comfort at least."

Scott died Dec. 28 after an accident on Vee Lake, about 40 km north of Yellowknife. He collided with another sled, sending his machine tumbling through the air before he was himself struck by another snowmobiler.

Friends frantically performed CPR while they waited for rescue teams, but Dowdall was pronounced dead after arriving at Stanton Territorial Hospital. He was remembered by family members as caring, protective and outspoken.

"There was a direct link between his tongue and his mind," his father Bob joked.

Scott was born in a train station in the small Northern Ontario village of Missinabi on March 30, 1966. His mother, eight months pregnant at the time, was trying to get to a hospital in the nearby town of Chapleau.

"He was always impatient," she said.

He spent his childhood travelling across Canada with his parents -- who both worked in the mining industry -- and his three sisters, before settling in Yellowknife in 1979.

Dowdall was a self-taught computer whiz, working as a systems administrator for the territorial government for a time, his father said. His professional life included stints as a plumber, a cook and most recently as fire suppression analyst in Edmonton.

But it was his passion for the outdoors, and snowmobiling in particular, that his parents and long-time girlfriend Koomoo Kilibuk recalled most fondly.

"Everything he did, he did fast," Kilibuk said.

Dowdall got his first taste of driving a snow-machine at five years old, when he took his dad's sled for short spin around the family property.

"He only got about 500 yards, but it was enough to make his father panic," he said.

Above all else, Dowdall loved his family, his father recalled.

"He was protective of everybody."

"There was nothing he would not do for you," Sandi added.

That included weekly -- and sometimes daily -- calls to his parents and siblings while he was working in Edmonton.

"I wish that phone would ring again," his mother said.

A celebration of his life was held Monday at the Elks club. Instead of the usual sombre tones of memorial service, his family played AC/DC and other classic 1980s rock tunes.

"That's the way he would have wanted it," said Sandi.