"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.) It concerns the cremation of a prospector who freezes to death near Lake Laberge (spelled "Lebarge" by Service), Yukon, Canada, as told by the man who cremates him.

Sam McGee has left his (fictional) hometown of Plumtree, Tennessee, to seek gold in the Yukon. While travelling 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] of Lake Lebarge", he finds a derelict steamer frozen in the ice and decides to make use of it. Once Cap has lit and fuelled 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.

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. and had originally been named for the wife and daughter of Albert Sperry Kerry Sr. 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). (Although a boat named Alice May sank on Lake Laberge, that happened a decade after the publication of the poem.)

William Samuel McGee 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".

In 1909, McGee travelled 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. 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,^{[clarification needed]} said to contain the ashes of Sam McGee, were being sold to visitors.