Born in Causapscal, Quebec, Canada, and raised in the tough Hochelaga-Maisonneuve section of Montreal, where his family moved when he was two years old, Boucher was arrested several times during his youth for small acts of delinquency.

His first experience with biker gangs was in a local Montreal-based biker gang called the SS. Ironically, one of the fellow members of the gang was Salvatore Cazzetta, a biker who would later go on to be one of the founders of the Rock Machine, with whom Boucher's Hells Angels would eventually be locked in a bloody turf war.

By late 1987, soon after finishing a 40-month sentence for armed sexual assault, Boucher joined the Hells Angels outlaw motorcycle club in Montreal and quickly began rising through the ranks. By the early 1990s, he was considered one of the most powerful bikers in the province and was involved in numerous lucrative criminal activities such as cocaine trafficking and loan sharking.

In 1994, following the arrest of Salvatore Cazzetta on charges of conspiring to import 11 tonnes of cocaine, the Rock Machine was rendered temporarily leaderless. Boucher, by now president of the Montreal chapter of the Hells Angels, decided to make his move against the Rock Machine and other independent dealers. His ultimate aim was to establish a Hells Angels monopoly over street-level drug dealing in the Montreal area and eventually the whole province. This would be the spark that would set off the Quebec Biker war.

In 1995, Boucher decided to start a new Hells Angels chapter which he would lead. The Hells Angels Nomads chapter was a group made up of the most powerful Hells Angels in Quebec and not bound by geographical locations like other Hells Angels chapters.