Yukon who is who

Roderick McDonald (1863 – 1943)

Roderick McDonald was born in Galmisdale, Isle of Eigg, Scotland. He lived in Glasgow and Inverness before travelling to the United States in 1885. He worked on his aunt’s farm in Lowell, Washington for a year and then moved to Seattle. In 1889, he started working as a bookkeeper for the affluent hops producer Ezra Meeker in Puyallup, Washington. McDonald and Meeker’s daughter, Olive Grace, were married in 1890. The hops industry collapsed during the 1890s depression and Meeker turned to other occupations. He formed the International Mine Development Company in 1896 with McDonald as a company trustee.¹⁾

The mining venture never materialized and instead McDonald and Meeker joined the Klondike stampede in September 1898 with supplies to sell to the Dawson miners. They opened up the Log Cabin Grocery in Dawson and sold desiccated vegetables and other southern imports. Olive and their infant son, Wilfred Gordon (b. 1899), joined him in Dawson in June of 1900, and they relocated to Grand Forks.²⁾ He was the manager of the North American Trading & Transportation Co. store in Bonanza (Grand Forks) from 1900 – 1902 or ‘04.³⁾

Between 1904 and 1908, McDonald worked for the North American Transportation & Trading Company (NAT&T) store in Dawson. The company sent him to Eagle, Alaska in 1908 and he remained there until 1910 when he was transferred back to Dawson to manage the company’s dry goods department.⁴⁾

In 1912, the NAT&T closed their stores and McDonald started work with the Northern Commercial Company in Forty Mile. The Forty Mile store closed in 1915 and McDonald was transferred to their Dawson store. The McDonald family remained in Dawson until 1918 where McDonald was active in St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church. In 1918 the family moved to a fruit ranch that they owned in Penticton, British Columbia.⁵⁾

Roderick MacDonald’s photographs are held at the Yukon Archives [and the Dawson City Museum?].⁶⁾