Bobo Larocque (1931 – 2007)
Bobo Laroque was born in Ontario and, as a young boy, worked at his uncle’s farm in Timmons. He also worked on Saturdays at a slaughterhouse that killed 60-100 pigs daily. He arrived in the Yukon in 1962 as a miner and was part of the start-up of every Yukon mine except the one at Keno already in operation.1)
Bobo Larocque was a mining teacher with the Yukon Government for seven years and he trained 252 men to become hardrock miners. He was a capable miner himself and worked twenty-six years in mines in Quebec, Ontario, and Yukon. Shaft sinking was his speciality, but he also drove raises and drifts.2)
Bobo and his wife Gail owned and operated the Cinnamon Cache Bakery outside Carcross.3) They lived on the shore of Spirit Lake, on a 17-acre parcel. Bobo was an organic farmer who conditioned his soil with mature and green manure. He believed that seventeen acres was enough to be a small scale intensive farmer. He and Gail had a successful green house and market garden. He seeded his tomatoes and cucumbers directly into the greenhouse and channelled solar energy through a unique system of tubes and wires. They harvested extremely large yields of tomatoes and cucumbers mid-way through the summer.4)