Two Pieces of Verse, by Robert W. Service (1874-1958), the Ayrshire Poet, Never Officially Published

THE WORKS OF ROBERT W. SERVICE ARE PUBLIC DOMAIN.
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There is a small body of Robert W. Service's work, that has never been officially published  (any material that has been put on paper or produced in any substantial, permanent, form has been published; and, in Canada at least, is automatically subject to copyright law-date or official/commercial publication is NOT needed.) but in the briefest of ways, in biographies. Due I'm sure partly to Robert's "thrifty" nature, he would often, when invited to social occasions such as birthday parties, compose a poem for the guest of honour rather than purchase a more conventional gift. Unfortunately, because of their very nature, these poems have almost completely vanished. Yet, judging from the one reproduced here, they have the potential to tell a great deal about everyday life as it was seen by a Whitehorse bank clerk.

"Bob Smart's Dream" seems to have been written for a banquet held upon the resignation of J.P.Rogers, the Superintendent of the White Pass & Yukon Route. It was held on March 19, 1906, and the Whitehorse Star reported that all of Whitehorse's dignitaries were there; many of them feature in Service's poem:

Bob Smart had been the Government Assayer at Whitehorse since 1903;

J.P.Whitney owned one of the two largest general stores in town;

Bob Lowe was the member of the Territorial Council;

Bill Grainger owned a great deal of mining property in the southern Yukon;

Barney McGee had just gone into partnership with Pete Richen in the Commercial Hotel, where the banquet was held;

Bill Clark had been mining around Whitehorse since it was first settled; the Deacon was the nickname of lawyer Willard Phelps.

The sentiments spelled out in this piece seem to have been typical of the attitudes of the day, when mining at Whitehorse, Windy Arm and the Wheaton Valley was booming. Luckily, much of the progress envisioned never came to pass. There are no stamp mills, no smelter, no 18-storey buildings, no White Pass & Yukon "flyer" to Dawson (or even to Whitehorse any more). The "club" (the North Star Athletic Club) no longer exists, nor does Taylor & Drury's store. And Ear Lake is a gravel pit, not a park. But the steel bridge was built, and "the villas with gardens a flower" are in abundance. All in all, I think that Bob and the Deacon and Barney McGee would be pleased.

Bob Smart's Dream

This is my dream of Whitehorse

When fifty years have sped,

As after the Rogers' Banquet

I lay asleep in my bed.

I tottered along the sidewalk

That was made of real cement;

A skyscraper loomed above me,

Where once I remembered a tent.

I heard the roar of a trolley,

And I stumbled out of the way;

I dodged a few automobiles,

And I felt I was getting quite gay.

I thought I'd cross the Yukon,

Over the big steel bridge;

I heard the roar of the stamp mills

Up on the western ridge.

Crushing the quartz from bullion,

And borne on the evening breeze

I sniffed the fumes of the smelter

And the suphur made me sneeze.

So I thought I'd go to Ear Lake Park

Where nature was fresh and fair;

('Twas donated by J.P.Whitney,

The multi-millionaire.)

Out past the smiling suburbs,

The villas with gardens aflower,

The factories down by the rapids

Run by the water power.

I took a car to the Canyon

And transferred up to the Park

And I sat on a bench by the fountain

Feeling as old as the Ark.

I sighed for the ancient landmarks,

The men that I used to know,

Till I stumbled against a statue,

And spelled out the name - Bob Lowe.

A litle chap who saw me

Said with evident pride:

"That is a bust of my grandpa:

It's twenty years since he died.

And if you think I'm fooling,

Ask that boy and you'll see -

He's little Billy Grainger, my playmate,

And that's little Barney McGee."

Then I turned once more to the city,

With its streets like canyons aroar;

And the lights of Taylor & Drury's

Colossal department store:

The eighteen storey steel palace

Where once stood the White Pass Hotel,

The silent rush of its elevators

The clamor of bell upon bell.

And over there at the depot

The hurry, the crush and the din,

The flyer just starting for Dawson,

The bullion express coming in.

The business blocks all abustle,

The theatres all alight,

The Home of Indigent Sourdoughs

Endowed by Armstrong and White.

And everywhere were strangers,

And I thought in the midst of these

Of Old Bill Clark in his homespun,

And debonnaire Mr.Breze:

And Fish, and Doc and the Deacon,

And the solo bunch at the club -

Now grown to a stately mansion

That would make the old place look dub.

It was all so real, so lifelike,

I awoke like a man in a fog,

So I shed a few tears in the darkness,

And groped for the hair of the dog.

This was my dream of Whitehorse

When fifty years have sped,

As I lay asleep in my bed.

___ Robert  W. Service, 1905 ____________________

Robert William Service was born into a Scottish family while they were living in Preston, England. He was schooled in Scotland, attending Hillhead High School in Glasgow. Service moved to Canada at the age of 21 and travelled to Vancouver Island, British Columbia with his Buffalo Bill outfit and dreams of becoming a cowboy. He drifted around western North America, wandering from California to British Columbia, taking and quitting a series of jobs: Starving in Mexico, residing in a California bordello, farming on Vancouver Island and pursuing unrequited love in Vancouver. This sometimes required him to leech off his parent's Scottish neighbours and friends who had previously emigrated to Canada.

In 1899, Service was a store clerk in Cowichan Bay, British Columbia. He mentioned to a customer (Charles H. Gibbons, editor of the Victoria Daily Colonist) that he wrote verses, with the result that six poems by "R.S." on the Boer Wars had appeared in the Colonist by July 1900 – including "The March of the Dead" that would later appear in his first book. Service's brother, Alex (Alex was, especially by persons of Scottish decent pronounced Alec or Alick) was a prisoner of the Boers at the time, having been captured on November 15, 1899, alongside Winston Churchill.

The Colonist also published Service's "Music in the Bush" on September 18, 1901, and "The Little Old Log Cabin" on March 16, 1902.

Hired by the Canadian Bank of Commerce, he worked in a number of its branches before being posted to the branch in Whitehorse (not Dawson) in the Yukon Territory in 1904, six years after the Klondike Gold Rush. Inspired by the vast beauty of the Yukon wilderness, Service began writing poetry about the things he saw; conversations with locals led him to write about things he hadn't seen, many of which hadn't actually happened, as well. He did not set foot in Dawson City until 1908, arriving in the Klondike ten years after the Gold Rush, but his renown as a writer was already established.

He is said to have composed his first;, and shortest, verse, a grace, on his sixth birthday:

God bless the cakes and bless the jam;

Bless the cheese and the cold boiled ham:

Bless the scones Aunt Jeannie makes,

And save us all from bellyaches. Amen  ________