William ”Sam” McGee had no idea that an innocent trip to the local bank where Robert Service worked would turn his name into a household word. Upon making a deposit, Service noticed a poetic ring to the name and the rest is history. Actually the “real” Sam McGee was not from Tennessee but was born near Peterborough, Ontario in the year 1867. In 1898 McGee came to Yukon via San Francisco and the Chilkoot Pass and in 1899 he built and settled into his little cabin at Whitehorse (still in perfect shape in the local museum). That same year he discovered and staked the War Eagle Copper Mine, which eventually produced over $20,000,000 worth of copper, gold and silver.
Although Sam liked to dabble in prospecting and mining claims, his main occupation during his years spent in the north was building roads. Some of the roads he oversaw construction on are the Whitehorse-Carcross wagon road (1906), the Conrad-Carcross wagon road (1905), the road to War Eagle Mine (1906) and sections of the Whitehorse-Kluane road (1904).
McGee also operated the Racine Sawmill at Tagish for a while catering to the town of Conrad during its boom and when that was over he relocated to Canyon Creek on the Kluane road where he operated a roadhouse. Attesting to Sam’s ability with broadaxe and hammer, the bridge he built at that location still stands strong today (although it has been partially rebuilt).
By 1907 McGee was back in Whitehorse where he had a rather “imposing” two-story log home built for himself, his wife Ruth (married 1901) and their two children; daughter Emil (born 1903) and son Barney? (Born 1902). By 1909 however, after spending over ten years of his life pioneering in the Yukon, Sam, who in the poem was said to be permanently “chilled”, opted for sunnier climes, moving with his family to Summerland, British Columbia to become a fruit farmer. Upon McGee’s retirement from the Yukon, the Whitehorse Board of Trade held a banquet in his honor, presenting the “pioneer pathfinder” with a solid gold watch and chain for his unwavering service to the north country.
Following a three year stint in Summerland McGee and family moved to a farm in Ferguson Flats near Edmonton and in 1923 again relocated, this time to Great Falls, Montana where he worked “for quite a long time” as a contractor on road and railroad grades in Idaho and Montana. During this period McGee also worked on the road to Yellowstone National Park.
McGee returned to the Yukon once in 1916 to look after his interests in the War Eagle and again in 1938 for one last prospecting trip. On the later trip north McGee was rather amused to find his fellow steamship passengers buying “genuine ashes of Sam McGee” as souvenirs. In 1940 at the age of 74 Sam McGee died in Calgary, Alberta. According to his last wishes, rather than being cremated he was buried in a plot next to his wife.
