Roger Bolduc
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“He looked like nothing, but he was thinking all the time and he knew where he was heading,” Nault said. He offered the example of how Bolduc coupled a champion Belgian stud with his business of collecting collected pregnant mare urine for pharmaceutical purposes to produce valuable purebred foals that could be sold off for significant additional income.
Nault praised Bolduc’s strong ties to the local English and French communities, presenting his father in law as a man always open to new ideas and dif- ferent ways of doing things whose life and work was enriched by his kindness and willingness to engage with those around him.
Where his son-in-law remembers him for his business-savvy, Bolduc’s daughters Chantal and Ghislaine remember his presence, values and determination as a family man and champion horsepull competitor.
Ghislaine shared that her father had a childhood like that of many lifelong farmers in the area in that he cared much more for animals than he did for his studies. Taking on the care of his first horse at age ten, he picked up a love for the animals that would last his entire life.
“My father was a bit of a legend when it comes to horses,” Chantal said, relating that he was the provincial champion in horse pulls for several years in a row. There was a time, she added, that he would be at a different competition every weekend in places all over the province.
Ghislaine spoke of her father’s determination in overcoming the challenges faced by the family when the pharmaceutical industry made a practically overnight shift to laboratory production of the materials they had, historically, been collecting from mare’s urine. When that happened, she explained, the operations of the family farm had to shift almost as rapidly to some new purpose so as not to fall into ruin.
“To do nothing on a farm for a year is terrible,” Ghislaine said, explaining that inside of a year her father had gone west and returned with a train full of beef cattle. Though the farm and the family were able to recover from the shift, the Bolduc daughter described the change as one that was rough on everyone involved.
Through the changes on the farm, Chantal said that her father always kept horses for show and pulling, building links to the community by getting involved in local parades and fairs. She described him as someone who was always close with his neighbours and both calm and kind to people and to his horses. Those values, she added, rubbed off on his five children who have all stayed close to the Cookshire area and all have links in their lives to the agricultural community.
“He had a good life,” Chantal said. “The team spirit, the family spirit, the community spirit was very strong.”