Cover
Michael Gnarowski — Series Editor
The Dundurn presents the Voyageur Classics series, building on the tradition of exploration and rediscovery and bringing forward time-tested writing about the Canadian experience in all its varieties.
This series of original or translated works in the fields of literature, history, politics, and biography has been gathered to enrich and illuminate our understanding of a multi-faceted Canada. Through straightforward, knowledgeable, and reader-friendly introductions the Voyageur Classics series provides context and accessibility while breathing new life into these timeless Canadian masterpieces.
The Voyageur Classics series was designed with the widest possible readership in mind and sees a place for itself with the interested reader as well as in the classroom. Physically attractive and reset in a contemporary format, these books aim at an enlivened and updated sense of Canada’s written heritage.
Michael Gnarowski co-edited The Making of Modern Poetry in Canada, compiled The Concise Bibliography of English Canadian Literature, and edited the Critical Views of Canadian Writers series for McGraw-Hill Ryerson. He has written for Encyclopedia Americana, The Canadian Encyclopedia, The McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of World Biography, and The Oxford Companion to Twentieth-Century Poetry. Gnarowski is professor emeritus at Carleton University in Ottawa.
OTHER VOYAGEUR CLASSICS TITLES
The Blue Castle by Lucy Maud Montgomery, introduced by Dr. Collett Tracey 978-1-55002-666-5
Canadian Exploration Literature: An Anthology, edited and introduced by
Germaine Warkentin 978-1-55002-661-0
Combat Journal for Place d’Armes: A Personal Narrative by Scott Symons,
introduced by Christopher Elson 978-1-55488-457-5
The Donnellys by James Reaney, introduced by Alan Filewod 978-1-55002-832-4
Empire and Communications by Harold A. Innis, introduced by
Alexander John Watson 978-1-55002-662-7
The Firebrand: William Lyon Mackenzie and the Rebellion in Upper Canada by
William Kilbourn, introduced by Ronald Stagg 978-1-55002-800-3
In This Poem I Am: Selected Poetry of Robin Skelton, edited and introduced by
Harold Rhenisch 978-1-55002-769-3
The Letters and Journals of Simon Fraser 1806–1808, edited and introduced by
W. Kaye Lamb, foreword by Michael Gnarowski 978-1-55002-713-6
Maria Chapdelaine: A Tale of French Canada by Louis Hémon, translated by
W.H. Blake, introduction and notes by Michael Gnarowski 978-1-55002-712-9
The Men of the Last Frontier by Grey Owl, introduced by
James Polk 978-1-55488-804-7
Mrs. Simcoe’s Diary by Elizabeth Posthuma Simcoe, edited and introduced by
Mary Quayle Innis, foreword by Michael Gnarowski 978-1-55002-768-6
Pilgrims of the Wild, edited and introduced by Michael Gnarowski
978-1-55488-734-7
The Refugee: Narratives of Fugitive Slaves in Canada by Benjamin Drew,
introduced by George Elliott Clarke 978-1-55002-801-0
The Scalpel, the Sword: The Story of Doctor Norman Bethune by Ted Allan and Sydney Ostrovsky, introduced by Julie Allan, Dr. Norman Allan, and Susan Ostrovsky
978-1-55488-402-5
Selected Writings by A.J.M. Smith, edited and introduced by Michael Gnarowski 978-1-55002-665-8
Self Condemned by Wyndham Lewis, introduced by Allan Pero 978-1-55488-735-4
The Silence on the Shore by Hugh Garner, introduced by George Fetherling
978-1-55488-782-8
Storm Below by Hugh Garner, introduced by Paul Stuewe 978-1-55488-456-8
A Tangled Web by Lucy Maud Montgomery, introduced by Benjamin Lefebvre
978-1-55488-403-2
The Yellow Briar: A Story of the Irish on the Canadian Countryside by Patrick Slater, introduced by Michael Gnarowski 978-1-55002-848-5
FORTHCOMING
Duncan Campbell Scott: Selected Writings, edited, selected, and introduced by
Michael Gnarowski 978-1-45970-144-1
The Kindred of the Wild: A Book of Animal Life by Charles G.D. Roberts,
introduced by James Polk 978-1-45970-147-2
The Town Below by Roger Lemelin, introduced by Michael Gnarowski
978-1-55488-803-0
ROBERT W. SERVICE
SELECTED POETRY AND PROSE
EDITED, SELECTED, AND INTRODUCED BY
MICHAEL GNAROWSKI
Introduction
BY MICHAEL GNAROWSKI
Most readers know Robert William Service as the author of two signature poems: “The Shooting of Dan McGrew” and “The Cremation of Sam McGee,” two ballad-like verse narratives that, it may now be said, anchor Service’s first published collection of verse, which he called Songs of a Sourdough.1 The popularity of the two ballads was quickly established, and they were frequently quoted, recited from the stage and on the radio and, in one case, made into a short film. More knowledgeable readers may be able to identify Service as the premier poet of the Canadian North or, as he became known, as the Bard2 of the Yukon, a role that Service took on readily, making the spell of the North an almost hypnotic reference in his early collections of verse.
His contemporaries were only too happy to grant Service “poet in residence in the North” status and accept him as one with the hardy types who braved unimaginable hardships to join the gold rush and, in Service’s immortal phrase, “to moil for gold.” This series of mining discoveries that drew thousands into the brutal environments of Alaska and the near-Arctic of the Canadian North also inscribed the word Klondike on the map of the imagination and acted as a powerful stimulus to the creative urges of Service.
We know that he was born in 1874 of British stock, although there was a strong element of the Scottish in his roots, and the iconic presence of Robert Burns and the border ballads of Sir Walter Scott remained strongly established in his mind. Throughout his life and his writing career, Service maintained a careful reticence about the biographical facts of his life,3 so much so that even some reference works are at a loss as to dates and events of his circumstances. His biographer, Carl Klinck, saw fit to refer to him as “this otherwise unknown man.” What is particularly curious is that even his publishers were either bullied or persuaded to join in this act of authorial privacy and were content to reveal precious little by way of biographical notes or introductory remarks about their markedly prolific author who had managed to draw to his writing if not to himself a large and loyal readership.
The jacket of Bar-Room Ballads (1940).
Robert William Service (the “William” eventually disappeared from the covers and the title pages of his many books) was a Lancashire