Larocque Farm

The photo shows the Larocque farm across the road from the current site of Nipissing University. Onesime Larocque, from Rigaud Quebec, arrived in Widdifield Township in 1893 and married Delia Gratton. In 1899, they purchased Lot 22, Concession B (on Gormanville Road across from Nipissing University) and built a small log house. In the early 1900’s they enlarged the home to a plank house and eventually added a second storey and enclosed porch. They operated a typical “bush farm” at first and then produced milk, sold to as a cash crop. 

Needing more hay, Onesime received a land grant for property on the South Shore of Lake Nipissing (now Seguin’s Campground). On this property, he grew hay for his dairy farm.  In the winter he’d go by sled and horse across the ice on Lake Nipissing and haul it back to the home farm. 

The early years were challenging, with little money. Onesime traded wood for groceries and once, during the depression, his son Euclid sold his best dairy cows to pay insurance premiums. At one time, with several girls at St Joseph’s college, tuition was paid with carrots and potatoes.

Onesime was a businessman and he, with two of his sons, ran a butcher-charcuterie business established in 1918 in town, while son Euclid and other sons ran the farm. The farm ran as a dairy farm until 1958 until it was converted to a beef farm and then in the seventies to a commercially run sugar house. Yvon, grandson of Onesime and Delia, were living at the farm when it was sold to Nipissing University in 2011.

Memories of... Pumping  Water
“One of my fondest memories is of the outside pressure water system that supplied the two story house with water. It operated by two long levers that had to be pulled back and forth. I always wanted to try it, but was too small to reach the levers. My brothers got this exciting task.

— Yvan Larocque