Home » Poetry and Literature » Poets » S » Service Robert W Poetry » Canadian Poets Service Robert W Poetry in Poetry Resource Directory

Canadian Poets in Poets Biography & Poetry Resource Directory

Robert William Service was born in Preston, Lancashire, England on January 16, 1874 to Scottish parents. Educated at the University of Glasgow, Robert Service moved to Canada in 1894. He spent eight years in the Yukon working for the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, arriving in the Klondike several years after the peak of the Gold Rush. He was a correspondent for the Toronto Star during the Balkan Wars of 191213 and an ambulance driver in France during World War I. A poet and a novelist, Service was known as the Canadian Kipling for his popular verse ballads of the frozen North. Service’s frontier ballads include The Shooting of Dan McGrew, The Law of the Yukon and The Cremation of Sam McGee collected in Songs of a Sourdough 1907 later reissued as The Spell of the Yukon.

Website: http://www.ucalgary.ca/UofC/faculties/HUM/ENGL/canada/poet/r_service.htm