George Charles Fraser Pringle (1873 - 1949)
George Pringle was born in Ontario, the son of George and Mary Pringle, and the youngest of ten children. Brothers John and George were missionaries in the Klondike just after the gold rush, and bother James [Jack] was with the North-West Mounted Police.1) George Pringle obtained a degree of Doctor of Divinity conferred by the Union Theological College, Vancouver.2)
In 1899, George was a missionary in the back woods of Minnesota. During the winter of 1899/1900, Dr. Robertson, the Canadian Superintendent of Missions, sent a telegraph asking if Pringle could report to Winnipeg for duty in the Yukon. George took passage on the steamer Clutch bound for Skagway. The ship was overcrowded with those bound for the Klondike and they traded stories about those who had already made it rich in the goldfields. Pringle took the train to Log Cabin and took the Fan-Tail Trail seventy-five miles to Atlin. He travelled by dog team with a musher named Stewart. He met a brother who was headed the other way on his way home.3)
Pringle arrived in Dawson as a divinity student in the summer of 1902 and took charge of the mission work on the creeks. He was ordained in St. Andrews Church. His headquarters was on Gold Bottom Creek and he preached there and at Gold Run, Sulphur, Granville, Upper Dominion, and Hunker creeks for eight years.4)
In the early days, Reverend Pringle held services on alternate Sundays at Gold Bottom on Hunker Creek, Claim No. 2 Below on Sulphur Creek, and Claim No. 12 Below on Gold Run Creek. He made the rounds on foot and visited camps along the way. He had a charming personality and was held in high esteem.5) At Sulphur Creek he stayed at a roadhouse at two Below and had to enter by the barroom. One Sunday, he arrived at church to find only about a dozen of faithful. He returned to the bar and tried to induce the drinkers to come to her service. One patron said if he bought a round then everyone would attend. Pringle was a teetotaller but he took $15 from his pocket to seal the deal. His church was full for the sermon and he raised $175 in offerings from the miners.6)
Rev. George Pringle left the Yukon in 1910 for St. Andrews Church in Vernon, B.C. He was married in 1912. They moved to Collingwood Church in Vancouver until the spring of 1916 when he went overseas as a hospital chaplain and joined the 43rd Canadian Highlanders in France. He was at Passchendaele and spent nine months on a hospital ship, crossing the Atlantic twenty times. George Pringle was demobilised in 1919. He studied in Edinburgh and returned to Canada and took charge of the mission boat Sky Pilot, headquartered at Texada Island. After Church Union, he continued with the Coast Mission for several years.7)
Rev. Pringle returned to the Yukon and performed the wedding ceremony for Klondike Kate in Dawson in 1933 and officiated at the burial of Robert Henderson in the same year. He wrote numerous books in his lifetime.8) His last ministry was with Centennial United Church in Victoria. Ill health compelled him to the Shaughnessy Hospital in Vancouver in 1944.9)