Choquette left home on foot in 1849 at the age of 19 and set out first for work in Montreal, then traveled via Duluth, Minnesota, to Independence, Missouri, where he joined one of the many wagon trains bound for the California Gold Rush.
He worked his way north through the Shasta diggings, and then the Trinity, Scott and Klamath Rivers, reaching the Oregon Territory and making it to the Fraser goldfields in 1858.
News of his strike reached Victoria and thousands of men traveled via the Stikine and overland via another route up the Skeena River, by what became Hazelton.
As business on the river's diggings began to slow, Choquette opened a salmon saltery and in 1886 traveled via one of the first transcontinental Canadian Pacific Railway to testify at hearings in Ottawa concerning the location of the boundary between Alaska and British Columbia.
After the passing of his wife, with whom he had had many children, at the age of 70 Choquette struck out again for newer goldfields still farther north, opening a store in the Klondike.