Service, Robert William (1874-1958), was a Canadian poet known for his lively ballads about frontier life in the territory of Yukon. Many of his ballads also describe the beauty of Yukon.
Service was born on Jan. 16, 1874, in Preston, England, and grew up in Glasgow, Scotland. He moved to Canada in 1894 and held various jobs in the Canadian and American West. In 1902, he moved to Yukon and worked as a bank clerk in Dawson and Whitehorse, where he gained material for his ballads.
Service’s first book of verse, Songs of a Sourdough (1907), also published as The Spell of the Yukon, was an immediate success. This book included his best-known ballads, “The Shooting of Dan McGrew” and “The Cremation of Sam McGee.” They portray the hardship and violence of life in Yukon during the gold rush of the late 1890’s. Service wrote several other books of verse. He also wrote six novels, which were not as successful as his ballads.
Service left Yukon in 1912 and traveled extensively. In Rhymes of a Red Cross Man (1916), he described his experiences as an ambulance driver during World War I. He spent most of his later life in France and died there on Sept. 11, 1958. Service wrote a two-volume autobiography, Ploughman of the Moon: An Adventure into Memory (1945) and Harper of Heaven: A Record of Radiant Living (1948).
