Robert Service: The True Adventures of Yukon's Favourite Bard

I loved this book. Ella Andra-Warner strikes again. Would make a great present for young and old.

ROBERT SERVICE: The True Adventures of Yukon’s Favourite Bard

By Elle Andra-Warner

Reviewed by Joan M. Baril

There are strange things done in the midnight sun and the strangest you ever will see occurred in 1904 in a branch of the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce located in Whitehorse in the Yukon. Imagine a young clerk, very late at night, huddled in his teller cage, writing verses that flowed effortlessly from his pen. He had written poems when he was a youngster in Scotland and some of them had been published. But he knew this one was a corker. Earlier, on a midnight walk, as he passed the open door of a local saloon, the first line came to him: A bunch of the boys were whooping it up…

Then a shot rang out. It’s a good thing for Robert Service that the security guard possessed a poor aim and a good thing for the millions of people worldwide who came to love Robert’s verses.

And a good thing for me and my canoe tripping friends as we sat around the camp fire listening to the famous and familiar poem that ends: There sat Sam, looking cool and calm and, at this point, we all roared out the final verse.

Songs of a Sourdough accompanied me on many canoe trips but somewhere on the Nahanni, I left the book behind. I want to believe other campers found it in its plastic bag and snatched it up with joy, because no matter who they were or where they came from, they’d see the Service name and read out the poems which are known and loved all over the world.

Service made money from Songs of a Sourdough as he did from all his subsequent books. As Andra-Warner says: “The money gave him the freedom to do what he always wanted to do since he was a child: have adventures.” Humans crave adventure, and young Robert, a restless boy, lived with his dreams of daring-do even when working as an apprentice bank clerk in Glasgow. Finally, the monotony of banking life lured him to Canada to become a rolling stone, a hobo, a farm worker and a labourer as he moved through British Columbia and California. When he learned about the Canadian north, so mysterious, dangerous and unforgiving, of course, he had to go.

Andra-Warner has a knack for making her characters jump off the page. Robert Service was a complex man who lived for his thrill-seeking journeys. As a reader, I kept thinking, what will this guy do next? He’s off to the Balkan Wars. He’s in the South Seas collecting material for a novel. He’s urging his dog team through some of the riskiest terrain known. He’s in Hollywood, in the movies yet! He drives an ambulance in the Great War. He checks out Communism in Russia. He manages to get his family out of France ahead of the advancing Nazis. On and on.

He was the consummate survivor, no matter what life threw at him.  At the same time, he was a likable good-natured fellow, a bit of a showman, even as a child standing on a kitchen chair and reciting poems for the family. Service had the great gift of remaining cheerful and optimistic under the most perilous conditions. He was the carefree extrovert who loved parties, dancing, reciting, theatricals, socializing and talking to people, and getting their stories which sometimes showed up later in verse. People liked him just as I, the reader, liked him. He sought out the wild and dangerous corners of the earth and he liked to hear similar experiences from others.

He never considered himself as a poet but rather a rhymer, a versifier. He was a haunter of libraries, a constant reader, a collector of dramatic tales who rattled off as many as three poems a day and made an excellent living at it.

Everything he wrote sold well. In his cabin in Dawson City, he tacked sheets of paper to the log walls and wrote out his verses with a piece of charcoal. Then, stepping back, he considered possible revisions.

What advice did he give to emerging poets? “Write verse; not poetry. The public wants verse.” How did he sum up his own life? In a speech at the International Sourdough’s Association he said: “All the things I am and have, I owe to the North.”

This is a rollicking well-written biography that suits the man who inhabits it. Elle Andra -Warner has giving us a book that will be enjoyed by all those who like the works of Robert Service and that, I think, is just about everyone.

 Elle Andra-Warner was born in a castle in Europe. Spoke two languages by age five. Lived in three countries by age six. Now based in Thunder Bay, Elle Andra-Warner is an award-winning journalist, columnist, and best-selling author of Canadian non-fiction books, including Edmund Fitzgerald: The Legendary Great Lakes Shipwreck;  David Thompson: A Life of Adventure and Discovery; Hudson’s Bay Company Adventures; James Macleod: The Red Coats’ First True Leader; and Robert Service: True Adventures of Yukon’s Favourite Bard (re-issued spring 2020 by Heritage House Publishing).  She also has an upcoming book to be released in 2020 on Lake Superior lighthouses of Ontario, Minnesota and Isle Royale.

A professional writer for almost 30 years, her feature articles about travel, history, people, mining, arts and culture have appeared around the world, published by National Geographic, Northern Wilds, Toronto Star, Lake Superior Magazine, Up Here, Singapore Airlines Silver Kris, WestJet Airlines, Thunder Bay Seniors, Above & Beyond, Connecting Horizons, to name a few.  Her corporate writing includes projects with Diavik Diamond Mines, Northwest Territories Tourism, Ontario Tourism, Confederation College and City of Thunder Bay. Elle has also facilitated workshops on writing, including arts & culture, travel journalism, freelance writing and non-fiction, both nationally and regionally.    

Estonian by heritage, her first few years were spent with her parents in a post-war United Nations Displaced Persons Camp for Estonians in West Germany, before moving to England and then on to Canada with her parents. Since then, Thunder Bay has been her primary residence, with short stints residing in Yellowknife and northern Alberta.

A political studies graduate of Lakehead University, Elle is a National Director on Access Copyright Foundation; a founding director on board of the Lakehead Transportation Museum Society; former long-time board director of Thunder Bay Museum; and, past co-editor of the museum’s Papers & Records, as well as past president, executive and director of national, provincial and regional organizations.  Elle is a member of The Writers Union of Canada, Canadian Freelance Guild, Creative Non-Fiction Collective, Superior Scribes and Northwestern Ontario Writers Workshop.