Alex McDonald

Alexander "Big Alex" McDonald (1859–1909) was a Canadian gold prospector who made (and lost) a fortune in the Klondike Gold Rush, earning himself the title "King of the Klondike".

Biography The son of Scottish immigrants, McDonald was born in Antigonish, Nova Scotia. He was an unsuccessful prospector, having tried his luck in the Colorado gold fields, before heading to the gold rush in Juneau, Alaska, in the late 1880s. In 1895 Gold was discovered in the region in 1897.

He was nicknamed the "Big Moose from Antigonish", "Big Alex" and "Big Mac". or all In the first 45 days, that amounted to $30,000. finding time to marry, in London, Margaret Chisholm, the twenty-year-old daughter of the superintendent of the Thames Water Police, and to be received by Pope Leo XIII, who made him a Knight of the Order of St. Gregory in appreciation of his generosity.

However, though the gold rush eventually died down, McDonald continued to buy land claims, now mostly worthless, squandering his money. Living alone in a cabin on Clearwater Creek, he died of a heart attack in 1909.

McDonald's legend was retold in an anonymous poem called "King of the Klondike" (c. 1910).

His resting place is in the cemetery in Dawson City.