Roger Caron, the charismatic best-selling author of books and thievery was laid to rest Saturday at a private ceremony attended by close family and friends.
Caron was remembered by his sister Sue MacGregor with fondness and a good deal of emotion.
“I’m really going to miss him,” MacGregor said, suppressing tears. “He kept me busy.”
Caron rose to national prominence in 1978 when he was presented with the Governor General Award for non-fiction after he penned Go-Boy! – a memoir of his life behind bars and growing up in reformatories.
Caron was an on-again, off-again criminal during different periods of his life. When Go-Boy! was published Caron was 39 years old, having spent 23 of those in one prison or another.
But most of that was forgotten during Saturday’s brief internment ceremony at St. Columban’s Cemetery on 11th Street West in Cornwall.
A small group of about a dozen family and friends huddled around the grave site under sunny skies. Caron’s niece Nancy Kirkey led the family in singing Amazing Grace before all recited the Lord’s Prayer.
A Toronto film crew was also at the service, shooting scene for an upcoming documentary on Caron’s life. The crew has been filiming for five years, said MacGregor.
Caron passed away in April of this year just one day short of his 73rd birthday. He had been a resident at Sandflied Place on Cumberland Street.
