'If you don’t start the journey, you’ll never take the journey;' A museum-quality display a lifetime in the making

LACONIA — Raymond Boissoneau came into the world with little in the way of economic advantage, but the hand he was dealt contained one powerful card: the ability to sniff out opportunity. He later paired that card with an understanding of how to treat people fairly, and the result was a career that saw the child of French-Canadian immigrants run a multinational manufacturing company, while simultaneously chasing a passion for motorsport.

Now that his working years are behind him, Boissoneau has returned to where it all started for him, the city of Laconia, where he opened a museum of sorts, filled with artifacts of his twin pursuits, racing and industry.

The collection takes up every corner of a 30,000-square-foot space in Lakeport.

In 1938, Boissoneau was born at Laconia Hospital, part of a generation of children born to people who relocated from French-speaking Canada — Boissoneau’s mother was born in Quebec — who came to work in New England’s textile industry.

“I grew up in Laconia. As a youngster, you ended up working in a lot of mills,” Boissoneau explained. That work started early for Boissoneau, when he was still an elementary school student growing up on Avery Street.

“I always worked,” he simply said. His first job was as a helper on a milk delivery truck. In high school, he set pins at a bowling alley. In between, though, was when manufacturing got into his blood.

He and other neighborhood kids were hired to work as “stocking turners” in Pitman’s Hosier Mill. The knitting machines would churn out socks inside-out, and the mills were happy to employ young hands to turn the socks right, at the rate of a dime per dozen.

The stocking turners came in on the weekends, when the only other workers in the mill were the maintenance technicians who kept the machines running. Those technicians had a long to-do list, and a crew of young stocking turners who tired of turning socks.

“At the age of 10, 12 years old, they called us over and we helped them,” Boissoneau said. “We learned how to build machines.”

Machinery and racing entered his life at around the same time.

“I started racing at 10 or 11 years old,” he said. He and his friends would race anything that moved: bicycles, roller skates, ice skates. They had a go-kart, built from a kit, that they would tow with their bikes to the Gilford Bowl raceway, sneak onto the course after hours, and race until the cops came and sent them home.

“Then, as a kid, you go out and buy your first car,” Boissoneau said. His first was a ‘41 Chevy, which he procured with $50 of his own money. He brought it home and showed his father, who took a look underneath and found a fresh coat of paint was hiding a rusted-out chassis. His father, accompanied by a police officer, returned the car to the salesperson and convinced him to exchange it for a ‘37 in better condition.

After high school, Boissoneau joined the National Guard, then found full-time work at a manufacturer — but of a new era of products. He went to work for a facility that made circuit boards for electronic equipment.

The shop, in Massachusetts, gave Boissoneau an education on how not to run a business. The boss was in the practice of leaving for lunch around 11 a.m., and wouldn’t return until the end of the day. Meanwhile, Boissoneau’s co-workers started telling him that he should open his own company. He heard that enough that it started to make sense.

“If you don’t start the journey, you’ll never take the journey,” he remembered thinking. He started his first business in 1976, with little in the way of material or capital, but already rich in something that would come to define his career.

“I started with no money, but a lot of friends,” Boissoneau said. He found an unused storage shed at the former Grenier Air Force Base in Manchester. It didn’t even have electricity, but it had enough space, and Boissoneau had the means to fill it.

Boissoneau went around to other manufacturers in the region and asked about any mothballed equipment they had. His proposition was this: “If I make it, I’ll pay you,” and if he failed, he’d return the equipment. He was offering a can’t-lose deal, since the other manufacturers had no use for the machinery, and didn’t consider Boissoneau a threat.

In fact, it was his friendliness that made him such a threat. One by one, he added workers, and started building a loyal client list.

“If you build a relationship, you take care of your customers, the customer will come back every time,” he said.

At its height, his company, Electropac, employed more than 500 people, with locations in three countries. Boissoneau, who had once been paid less than a penny per sock he turned right-side-out, was running a company that cleared $60 million in annual sales.

The company’s largest manufacturing location was in Montreal, at a facility Electropac acquired around 2000.

When Boissoneau took over the Montreal plant, tension ran through the shop. The workforce reflected the diversity of immigration flowing into Quebec Province’s largest city, but the management team in place didn’t see this as an asset. Instead, they looked down on the workers from distant lands.

“They pushed the workforce, and they treated them like slaves,” Boissoneau said. Within a month, all those managers were fired, and the managers that replaced them were elected by the division they were to lead.

“They had the talent, they had the desire to succeed,” Boissoneau said. “I just let them come to the top.”

The diversity of the workforce became a point of celebration for the company, which started hosting “Culture Day” festivals, during which workers were invited to bring in clothing and food to represent their homeland.

As his company grew, Boissoneau said he remembered what it was like for him turning socks in Laconia.

“As a kid growing up, people gave me opportunity. If you provide that same atmosphere in a factory, you can attract top-line people,” he said. He built processes that allowed for front-line workers to express ideas. When he had facilities in the U.S., Canada and the U.K., department leaders were flown from their home plant to see how their colleagues in different countries approached their work. The goal was to make each employee feel a valued part of the team, he said.

“If your workforce is happy, you’re going to have a good company.”

With every step along the way, Boissoneau kept one foot in business, and one in racing.

Boissoneau was destined to be a gearhead. His father, Russell, built racecars while serving in the U.S. Army in Italy, then was part of a generation of G.I.s who turned to motorsports after their service.

“After World War II, the veterans that came back were the first to jump into racecars,” Boissoneau said.

His collection, now housed in Lakeport, pays tribute to this connection between military service and motorsports. The roughly 100 vehicles in the collection include several examples from that era, with their open cockpits and nothing to protect the drivers in case of a rollover. That risk seemed minimal, though, to service members who had just vanquished the Third Reich.

The collection includes examples from all classes, go-karts, jalopies, mini-sprints and indy cars, and everything in between.

Many of the cars were raced by Boissoneau, by his family members, or by friends. And he has a story to tell about each one.

Boissoneau has raced all over North America and at many famed tracks farther afield, such as at Germany’s storied Nurburgring. He once raced at Monaco, which he described as “a blast,” though the photographic evidence would suggest otherwise. His claim to fame from that race was that he took the opportunity, between races, to catch a nap in his car. A photojournalist captured the image. “I’ve been broadcast all over France,” he said, with a chuckle.

The racecars take up one half of the space; street cars are on the other. Many of them were brought back from Europe, such as a Ford Cosworth hatchback, an Alfa Romeo 75, and an English cab. The collection also includes a Ford Model A and Model T, a hot rod, a radio-controlled dragster, and many others of interest.

Boissoneau had a museum in mind when he originally bought the former Anchor-Darling factory, located on the shores of Lake Opechee just downstream from the Lakeport Dam, in 1998. In his original vision, he planned to bring a manufacturing facility to the lower part of the 185,000-square-foot facility. However, he acceded to requests from his daughter, Michelle DuPont, who wanted to start the Lake Opechee Inn and Spa in the lower part, which now also contains O Steaks & Seafood, and the upper section was used as a conference center. Two years ago began the process of transferring his massive collection from a warehouse in Concord to be displayed in Laconia, the city where Boissoneau’s story began.

The space is open to the public by appointment. To book a tour, call Boissoneau at 603-566-5770.