(died 16 Oct. 1935, aged 83 or 85), prospector and miner. (John McCrimmon) Born at Laggan, on Lot 3, in 8th Concession of Kenyon Township, GC. He was a veteran of the British Columbia and Yukon goldfields. In Dec. 1928, John McCrimmon, 77, “a native son of Glengarry county,” a prospector in Cassiar and the Yukon, was reported to be visiting Vancouver, after 52 years in northern goldfields, and to be on his way home to GC. He had a long partnership and friendship extending over some 50 years with another prospector, Donald McCuaig. McCrimmon and McCuaig, whose friendship seems to have become a Yukon legend in their own lifetimes, began their association in 1877 in the Cassiar country of B. C. and mined together in the Yukon from 1898. “When McCuaig died, McCrimmon left the Yukon and returned to Glengarry. The call of the West was too strong, however, and he eventually turned his face to the Pacific again to spend his last days among the British Columbia pioneers in the provincial home here.” (obituary, Glengarry News, but “here” refers to Kamloops, B. C.) John McCrimmon was a member of the Yukon Council in 1915 and 1916. He died in an old men’s home, the Provincial Home at Kamloops, B. C. He appears never to have married.

     He and McCuaig were the two prospectors whose long friendship is praised in the Rev. George C. F. Pringle’s 1922 book, Tillicums of the Trail: Being Klondike Yarns Told to Canadian Soldiers Overseas by a Sourdough Padre. Pringle, who used fictitious names, describes them as being one a native of Scotland and the other “born of Scottish parents in Glengarry county, Ontario.” The statement about one being a native of Scotland is either an error, or is part of the technique of maintaining the appearance of fiction, and the same must be true of Pringle’s report that at the time of writing the Scottish native had died but the Glengarrian was still surviving.

     Donald McCuaig (sp. McQuaig also found), was born just east of GC, in Vaudreueil County, Quebec, or possibly as another statement suggests, in GC itself. Aged 79, 5 years after Pringle’s book was published, McCuaig died in St. Mary’s Hospital, Dawson City, on 14 Sept. 1927. He was unmarried. Survivors included a nephew and niece in GC. There was no valid will, and his estate, which was very small, was divided among relatives. It was reported that he made a will leaving his property to McCrimmon, but that the will was invalid as not having been witnessed. A nephew in Vancouver suggested that McCrimmon should be given it all anyway. Unaware that McCuaig had died, one week after McCuaig’s death, Pringle, reminded of McCuaig by a recent chance meeting with the Vancouver nephew, wrote McCuaig a letter which survives in McCuaig’s estate papers in the Yukon. Pringle seems to have thought very highly of both the old prospectors, and McCrimmon’s Kamloops obituary mentions Pringle as one of McCrimmon’s friends.

Kamloops Sentinel 18 Oct. 1935, Glengarry News 1 Nov. 1935 * B. C. Archives: death registration * GN 7 Dec. 1928 (article repr. from the Beaver, which it has not been possible to trace in the files of the Beaver) & Cornwall Freeholder 15 Dec. 1928 * McCuaig: Dawson Daily News, 15 & 20 Sept. 1927; information, including death registration (McQuaig), kindly supplied by Yukon Archives; Yukon Public Administrator Records, Estate Files, 78/46, GOV 3674 File 2 (includes biog. data, also Pringle’s letter ) * Pringle: MDict 680; Bibliography of Glengarry 36