François-Xavier “Felix” Laderoute (1828 - 1935)
Felix Laderoute used horse teams to carry the mail from Almonte to Arnprior near Ottawa in 1839. He started working in the lumber business around 1841 and was foreman of a crew of lumberjacks on the Ottawa and Petawawa rivers for twenty-seven years. Laderoute ran rafts of square timbers down the Ottawa River to Quebec City for many years. One time he took twenty teams of horses with a freight of pork to the camps in Ontario at the head of Lake Temiskaming. That trip took six weeks during which nineteen horses were rescued after going through the ice. Laderoute was in the bow of a canoe that took Prince Edward from Ottawa to Arnprior.1)
Laderoute came to the Yukon in 1898. In 1903, he applied for two homesteads (320 acres) 100 feet back from the Yukon River at Kirkman Creek. The government only allowed him 160 acres but one of his sons, Isidore, was allowed a 160-acre homestead next to his father. They obtained the land in 1905. From 1900 to 1904, Laderoute cleared 300 cords of wood from the land.2) Felix Laderoute was the postmaster at Kirkman Creek, he operated a sheep farm, and he freighted food to mining camps in the area. He travelled to Ottawa in 1906 and again in 1916, spending time visiting his son and daughter in Ottawa and visiting relatives across Canada.3)
Marie-Ange Arbour was a widow with two young children when she arrived in the Yukon by train from Montreal in 1918. She was to be a housekeeper for [her father-in-law] Felix Laderoute, the Mayor of Kirkman Creek.4) The Whitehorse newspaper mistakenly identified Laderoute as Marie’s uncle.5) The Kirkman Creek property turned out to be a rough, dirt-floored, sheep ranch and Marie took the same sternwheeler back to Whitehorse.6)
In 1928/29, Laderoute used horse teams to deliver the mail on the Yukon River between Stewart River and Coffee Creek.7) Hugh Bostock met Felix in 1932 and saw his vegetable and flower gardens. He had sheep, a milking cow, and a saddle horse. He cut wood for the steamboats to get cash as was normal for those living along the river.8) Francis-Xavier Laderoute, age 95, married Katherine Smithers, age 70, of St. Paul, Minneapolis in May 1935.9)
Mount Laderoute (Lat. 62˚ 56’ 55” N and Long. 139˚ 51’ 22” W) is a mountain near Thistle and Kirkman creeks.