"The Cremation of Sam McGee" is among the most famous of Robert W. Service's poems. It was published in 1907 in Songs of a Sourdough . (A "sourdough", in this sense, is a resident of the Yukon.) [1] It concerns the cremation of a prospector who freezes to death near Lake Laberge [2] (spelled "Lebarge" by Service), Yukon, Canada, as told by the man who cremates him.
Sam McGee has left his (fictional) hometown of Plumtree, Tennessee, [a] to seek gold in the Yukon. While traveling the Dawson Trail with Cap, the narrator, Sam becomes convinced that he will die of exposure to the cold and asks Cap to cremate his body. Cap agrees to the request; Sam dies the next day, leaving Cap to haul the body along the trail in search of an opportunity to cremate it. Upon reaching the "marge [shore, edge] [3] of Lake Lebarge", he finds a derelict steamer frozen in the ice and decides to make use of it. Once Cap has lit and fueled the boiler furnace, he stuffs in Sam's body and walks away as it burns. He returns some time later and, upon opening the furnace door, is stunned to see Sam smiling contentedly and asking him to close it so the heat will not escape.
Robert Service based the poem on an experience of his roommate, Dr. Leonard S. E. Sugden, who had cremated a corpse in the firebox of the steamer Olive May. [4]
A success upon its initial publication in 1907, the poem became a staple of traditional campfire storytelling in North America throughout the 20th century. An edition of the poem, published in 1986 and illustrated by Ted Harrison, is read widely in Canadian elementary schools.
There are strange things done in the midnight sun,
by the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee.
Although the poem was fiction, it was based on people and things that Robert Service actually saw in the Yukon. Lake Laberge is formed by a widening of the Yukon River just north of Whitehorse and is still in use by kayakers. The Alice May was based on the derelict stern-wheeler the Olive May that belonged to the Bennett Lake & Klondike Navigation Co. [6] and had originally been named for the wife and daughter of Albert Sperry Kerry Sr. [7] It was abandoned after it struck a rock near Tagish, which is about 50 kilometres (31 mi) south of Lake Laberge. Dr. Sugden used its firebox to cremate the body of Cornelius Curtin (who had died of pneumonia). [b] (Although a boat named Alice May sank on Lake Laberge, that happened a decade after the publication of the poem.) [10]
William Samuel McGee [11] [12] [4] was primarily a road builder but did indulge in some prospecting. Like others, McGee was in San Francisco, California, at the time of the Klondike Gold Rush and in 1898 left for the Klondike.
In 1904, Service, who was working in the Canadian Bank of Commerce (the predecessor of the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce) branch in Whitehorse, saw McGee's name on a form and used it in his poem as it was a rhyme for "Tennessee". [13]
In 1909, McGee traveled south of the Yukon to build roads, including some in Yellowstone National Park. Eventually, McGee and his wife moved to live with their daughter outside of Beiseker, Alberta. However, in 1930, McGee returned to the Yukon to try prospecting along the Liard River, but met with no success. He did however return with an urn that he had purchased in Whitehorse. The urns, said to contain the ashes of Sam McGee, were being sold to visitors. [13]
McGee spent the rest of his life at his daughter's farm, where he died in 1940 of a heart attack, and is buried near Beiseker.
On 17 August 1976, Canada Post issued "Robert W. Service, Sam McGee" as an 8¢ stamp designed by David Charles Bierk. [14]
Johnny Cash's reading of the poem was National Public Radio's song of the day on May 9, 2006. Cash's "The Cremation of Sam McGee" was released along with a vast collection of personal archive recordings of Johnny Cash on the two-disc album Personal File. [15]
Canadian folksinger/songwriter Stompin' Tom Connors created an uptempo song summarizing the tale in the early 1970s on his album Stompin' Tom Meets Big Joe Mufferaw. [16]
In 2022, musician Seth Boyer adapted the poem into a bluegrass song for use in the video essay Fear of Cold by Jacob Geller. [17]
Whitehorse is the capital of the Yukon, and the largest city in Northern Canada. It was incorporated in 1950 and is located at kilometre 1426 on the Alaska Highway in southern Yukon. Whitehorse's downtown and Riverdale areas occupy both shores of the Yukon River, which rises in British Columbia and meets the Bering Sea in Alaska. The city was named after the White Horse Rapids for their resemblance to the mane of a white horse, near Miles Canyon, before the river was dammed.
Yukon is the smallest and westernmost of Canada's three territories. It is the most densely populated of the three territories, with an estimated population of 46,704 as of 2024, though it has a smaller population than all provinces. Whitehorse, the territorial capital, is the largest settlement in any of the three territories.
The Yukon River is a major watercourse of northwestern North America. From its source in British Columbia, it flows through Canada's territory of Yukon. The lower half of the river continues westward through the U.S. state of Alaska. The river is 3,190 kilometres (1,980 mi) long and empties into the Bering Sea at the Yukon–Kuskokwim Delta. The average flow is 6,400–7,000 m3/s (230,000–250,000 cu ft/s). The total drainage area is 854,700 km2 (330,000 sq mi), of which 323,800 km2 (125,000 sq mi) lies in Canada. The total area is more than 25% larger than Texas or Alberta.
Dawson City, officially the City of Dawson, is a town in the Canadian territory of Yukon. It is inseparably linked to the Klondike Gold Rush (1896–1899). Its population was 1,577 as of the 2021 census, making it the second-largest municipality in Yukon.
Bennett Lake is a lake in the Province of British Columbia and Yukon Territory in northwestern Canada, at an elevation of 656 m (2,152 ft). It is just north of the border with the United States state of Alaska, near the Alaskan port of Skagway. The lake has an estimated area of about 90.68 or 96.8 km2. The average depth is 61.9 m (203 ft) and the maximum depth is 123 m (404 ft).
The Klondike Highway is a highway that runs from the Alaska Panhandle through the province of British Columbia and the territory of Yukon in Canada, linking the coastal town of Skagway, Alaska, to Dawson City, Yukon. Its route somewhat parallels the route used by prospectors in the 1898 Klondike Gold Rush.
Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park is a national historical park operated by the National Park Service that seeks to commemorate the Klondike Gold Rush of the late 1890s. Though the gold fields that were the ultimate goal of the stampeders lay in the Yukon Territory, the park comprises staging areas for the trek there and the routes leading in its direction. There are four units, including three in Municipality of Skagway Borough, Alaska and a fourth in the Pioneer Square National Historic District in Seattle, Washington.
The Yukon Quest, formally the Yukon Quest 1,000-mile International Sled Dog Race, is a sled dog race scheduled every February since 1984 between Fairbanks, Alaska, and Whitehorse, Yukon, switching directions each year. Because of the harsh winter conditions, difficult trail, and the limited support that competitors are allowed, it is considered the "most difficult sled dog race in the world", or even the "toughest race in the world"—"even tougher, more selective and less attention-seeking than the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race." The originator envisioned it as "a race so rugged that only purists would participate."
Lake Laberge is a widening of the Yukon River north of Whitehorse, Yukon in Canada. It is fifty kilometres (31 mi) long and ranges from two to five kilometres wide, with an average depth of 54 metres (177 ft), a maximum depth of 146 metres (479 ft) and a surface area of 201 km2 (78 sq mi). Its water is always very cold, and its weather often harsh and suddenly variable.
Yukon is in the northwestern corner of Canada and is bordered by Alaska, British Columbia and the Northwest Territories. The sparsely populated territory abounds with natural scenery, snowmelt lakes and perennial white-capped mountains, including many of Canada's highest mountains. The territory's climate is Arctic in territory north of Old Crow, subarctic in the region, between Whitehorse and Old Crow, and humid continental climate south of Whitehorse and in areas close to the British Columbia border. Most of the territory is boreal forest with tundra being the main vegetation zone only in the extreme north and at high elevations.
Robert Carlin Donahue Jr., better known as "Buckwheat" Donahue, was an American folklorist, storyteller, entertainer, historian, adventurer, and four-time gold-panning champion, best known for his involvement in many different aspects of life in Alaska's Inside Passage. Although known for his time in and work with Alaska, he was born and died in Oklahoma.
"The Shooting of Dan McGrew" is a narrative poem by British-Canadian writer Robert W. Service, first published in The Songs of a Sourdough in 1907 in Canada.
Robert William Service was a Scottish-Canadian poet and writer, often called “The Poet of the Yukon" and "The Canadian Kipling". Born in Lancashire of Scottish descent, he was a bank clerk by trade, but spent long periods travelling in the west in the United States and Canada, often in poverty. When his bank sent him to the Yukon, he was inspired by tales of the Klondike Gold Rush, and wrote two poems, "The Shooting of Dan McGrew" and "The Cremation of Sam McGee", which showed remarkable authenticity from an author with no experience of the gold rush or mining, and enjoyed immediate popularity. Encouraged by this, he quickly wrote more poems on the same theme, which were published as Songs of a Sourdough, and achieved a massive sale. When his next collection, Ballads of a Cheechako, proved equally successful, Service could afford to travel widely and live a leisurely life, basing himself in Paris and the French Riviera.
Songs of a Sourdough is a book of poetry published in 1907 by Robert W. Service. In the United States, the book was published under the title The Spell of the Yukon and Other Verses.
A. J. Goddard was a Klondike Gold Rush era sternwheeler owned by Seattle businessman Albert J. Goddard and built for transport of men and supplies on the Upper Yukon River in Canada. She was assembled from pieces which were manufactured in San Francisco, shipped up to Skagway, Alaska, hauled over the Coast Mountains, and finally assembled at Lake Bennett. She made one trip to Dawson during the gold rush, was sold and sank in a storm on Lake Laberge in 1901. Her wreck was discovered in 2008 by Doug Davidge and was designated as a Yukon Historic Site.
The Klondike Gold Rush is commemorated through film, literature, historical parks etc.
Jim Boss was an entrepreneur and the chief of the Southern Tutchone Ta’an Kwäch’än for over 40 years. He is most known for having initiated the first Yukon land claim, in 1902. His leadership allowed the First Nations from the southern region of the Yukon to make the transition from a traditional way of life to a Euro-Canadian economy. In 2001, he was designated a Person of National Historic Significance.
"Last Sled to Dawson" is a 1988 Scrooge McDuck comic by Don Rosa. It is Rosa's third full-length Uncle Scrooge story after The Son of the Sun and Cash Flow, both published the previous year. Last Sled is the first story in which Rosa delves into Scrooge's past life, on his journey to becoming the richest man in the world, and so acts as a spiritual sequel to Carl Barks's classic Scrooge story "Back to the Klondike", describing his experiences as a gold prospector during the Klondike Gold Rush.
Lake Laberge is best known for the poem written by Robert Service, entitled "The Cremation of Sam McGee".
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