Robert W. Service

    Robert Service is a famous poet who wrote such legendary pieces as "The Cremation of Sam McGee", "The Spell of the Yukon" and "The Shooting of Dan McGrew". Many of his poems focused on the gold rush, in the Yukon, during the early 1900's.

    "A bunch of the boys were whooping it up at the Malamute Saloon;
The kid that hankles the music box was hitting a jag-time tune;
Back of the bar, in a solo game, sat Dangerous Dan McGrew,
And watching his luck was his light-o'love,
the lady that's known as Lou."
-The Shooting of Dan McGrew, by Robert W. Service

    Service's first collected works, "Songs of a Sourdough' was published in 1907. In 1909, "Ballads of a Cheechako" appeared. They were enormously popular. These rollicking ballads earned him fame throughout Europe as well as the accolade, "The Canadian Kipling."

    Among his later volumes are "Rymes of a Red Cross Man" (1916) and "Bar Room Ballads" (1940). " The Trail of '98' (1910) is a vivid novel of men and conditions in the Klondike. He also wrote two autobiographical works, 'Ploughman of the Moon' (1945) and "Harper of Heaven" (1948).

Artist Jim Robb 1981 Robert Service's Cabin in Dawson City

    Robert emigrated to Canada from Scotland in 1894 and spent eight years in Dawson City in the Yukon. This period in his life inspired him to write his most famous verses, notably "The Cremation of Sam McGee" and "The Shooting of Dan McGrew."

    Robert Service was also a newspaper correspondent for the Toronto Star during the Balkan Wars of 1912-13 and an ambulance driver and correspondent during World War 1. His experiences during that time inspired him to write a series of gritty and touching poems published in 1916 as "Rhymes of a Red-Cross Man." He lived mainly on the French Riviera until his death in 1958 at the age of 85.