Taissumani: Sept. 11, 1958 — Far From the Midnight Sun: Remembering Robert Service

KENN HARPER

“There are strange things done ‘neath the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold.
The arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold.
The northern lights have seen queer sights
But the queerest they ever did see,
Was that night on the marge of Lake LeBarge
When I cremated Sam McGee.”

These are perhaps the most famous words in northern poetry, the immortal verse of Robert Service, Bard of the Yukon.

Robert Service was born to Scottish parents living in England in January of 1874. When he was only 15 he started working for the Commercial Bank of Scotland. At 22, he moved to Canada and spent several years traveling in the Canadian and American west, finding jobs as he went.

In 1903 he went back to the familiar work of banking, in the Bank of Commerce in Vancouver. The following year he transferred to Whitehorse to work in the bank’s branch there. Four years later he transferred again, this time to Dawson City, the town that had been at the heart of the Klondike gold rush less than a decade earlier.

Service himself was not an adventurer. The only moiling for gold that he did was in the vaults of the banks where he worked.

But he was captivated by the beauty of the Yukon and the free and independent spirit of the eccentric people he met there. He listened to the tales of the men who had followed the glint of gold, who had made and lost fortunes, and who had settled down to live out their lives on the northern frontier.

His first book, “Songs of a Sourdough,” dealt primarily with the lure of the Yukon itself. In poems like “The Spell of the Yukon,” and “The Call of the Wild,” he wrote about the Yukon as a stark and savage land, yet a land that was captivating, that held people in its spell. Although it was “a fine land to shun,” it was also a place difficult to leave.

One of Service’s poems is called “The Men That Don’t Fit In.” It’s a short poem that begins:

“There’s a race of men that don’t fit in,
A race that can’t stay still;
So they break the hearts of kith and kin,
And they roam the world at will.
They range the field and they rove the flood,
And they climb the mountain’s crest;
Theirs is the curse of the gypsy blood,
And they don’t know how to rest.”

Service created just such men in many of his most popular poems. Dan McGrew, Sam McGee, Blasphemous Bill, Pious Pete, Clancy of the Mounted Police, Athabaska Dick, One-Eyed Mike and Hard-Luck Henry – these are characters that he created and brought to life on the printed page.

Their very names hint at the lawlessness of the gold rush, the desperation of the down-on-his-luck miner. And they allowed young Robert Service to venture vicariously over the mountain passes and into the goldfields while never leaving the comfort of his log cabin in Dawson.

Service’s poems were wildly popular. After 1909 he lived the rest of his life on the royalties that poured in from his writing.

He left the North in 1912 and moved to Paris. He married the following year. During the first World War, he was an ambulance driver and war correspondent.

He lived the rest of his life in France, except for two periods in Hollywood, the first in the 1920s when he worked on a movie version of “The Shooting of Dan McGrew,” and then again during the second World War.

The man who was sometimes known as “Canada’s Kipling,” who captured the spirit of the Klondike gold rush for future generations to appreciate, died in Lancieux, in Brittany, on Sept.11, 1958.

Taissumani: A Day in Arctic History recounts a specific event of historic interest, whose anniversary is in the coming week. Kenn Harper is a historian, writer and linguist who lives in Iqaluit. Feedback? Send your comments and questions to kennharper@hotmail.com.