|
The REAL
Sam McGee
by Nancy Millar
Now,
we all know that Sam McGee was from Tennessee where the cotton
blooms and blows, right? And why he left his home in the south
to roam round the Pole, God only knows, but while he was there,
he was cremated on the marge of Lake Lebarge, right?
Wrong. The
real Sam McGee never got anywhere near Tennessee, why he left
his home to roam is easily known, and for sure, he wasn't cremated.
The real Sam
McGee, and there was one, lived in the Yukon at the same time
as did a would-be poet called Robert Service. Sam McGee's full
name was William Samuel but William and Bill sounded too sissy
for a hardrock gold prospector so William became Sam. Robert Service
didn't change his name but he sure wanted to change his occupation.
He was a bank teller who scribbled poetry in his off-hours and
wanted to make it a full-time thing. One day Sam McGee came into
the bank and wrote his name on a transaction. Robert Service said
something like, "I've been looking for a name to rhyme with
Tennessee. Yours is perfect. Can I use it?" Sam said "Sure"
and that's when Service wrote the famous Cremation of Sam McGee.
He could have used the name without Sam's permission but it was
discussed, a fact that was mentioned in letters home to Sam's
family at the time.
In 1898, Sam
McGee was up in the north to make his fortune. Why else would
you go to a land so cold it would make your blood run cold? Along
with thousands of other anxious men seeking fortunes, he prospected
for gold but had no luck, along with thousands of other men. So
in 1909, he gave up and he and his family moved south where he
variously farmed, worked on roads and did construction. In 1938,
he made one last pilgrimage into an area north of Whitehorse where
he was convinced he could finally find the mother lode, but the
gold eluded him. Again, he came out empty-handed except for a
bag of "Genuine Sam McGee ashes" that he bought at his
original cabin now turned into a tourist attraction.
Meanwhile,
the poet Robert Service was living in England and the continent,
enjoying modest acclaim for his serious poetry and huge acclaim
for his poems from the North, in particular; The Cremation
of Sam McGee and The Shooting of Dan McGrew,
neither of which he particularly liked. They were doggerel, he
felt, and he wanted to move on beyond them. But he was stuck with
them and they did make him a wealthy man in the end. And they
made the fictional Sam McGee a household word.
The real Sam
McGee died in 1940 and was buried in the Beiseker Seventh Day
Adventist church yard under a modest black gravemarker that said
simply William McGee, Father, 1867-1940. Robert Service was in
Canada at the time and would have come to Sam's funeral except
that he went to the wrong church and missed the service. (Lots
of us do that- find the wrong church, that is. Sam's last resting
place is in a churchyard east and south of the town.) Anyway,
Service discovered his mistake in time to get to the graveyard
ceremonies.
There are
those who say the real Sam McGee was buried with the "Genuine
Sam McGee ashes," but I have my doubts. He joked about bringing
home his own ashes but the Sam McGee legend wasn't the size or
the tourist attraction that it is now. Besides, he was living
with his married daughter in Beiseker, AB, by the time he died
and they were a sensible farming family, not likely to mix poetry
and real life.
There is talk
now of adding a plaque to McGee's gravesite to give more details
about his life and to admit the connection between the famous
poem and its namesake. Which seems like a nice compromise. You
don't want a gravesite to have neon lights and a snack bar on
site, but it can't hurt to enjoy a good story now and then.
Nancy
Millar's books about graveyards include Remember Me As You
Pass By, (stories from Alberta graveyards) and Once Upon A
Tomb (stories from Canadian graveyards.) Both are a combination
of history, story and travel. They are available from many
bookstores, see the Links provided, or from Deadwood Distribution,
e-mail nemillar@shaw.ca.
Her other books include Once Upon A Wedding - Canadian history
through actual weddings; The Famous Five: Emily Murphy and
the Case of the Missing Persons, and Once Upon An Outhouse.
Also available from Deadwood. |
Highgate
R.B.Bennett
Lady
MacDonald - The Mystery of Mary
A
Graveyard Tale Closer To Home
More
Graveyard Tales
The
Titanic Cemetery
|
