Some believe Service was inspired by an entry in the North-West Mounted-Police reports from Tagish, regarding the steamer Olive May, which caught fire in Lake Laberge in 1898 and was frozen in for the winter. That winter the Tagish police learned of a man suffering scurvy, but by the time the police surgeon found him, he was dead and frozen. Unable to bury him, so the story goes, the doctor carried the body to the Olive May , cremated it in the boat's boiler, and returned the ashes to Tagish.
Although Service didn't admit it, many oldtimers thought this was the beginning of Sam McGee's creation. Of course the riverboat in the poem was not the Olive May but the Alice May .
