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He moved to Canada at the age of 21 when he gave up his job working in a Glasgow bank and travelled to Vancouver Island with his Buffalo Bill outfit and dreams of becoming a cowboy. Hired by the Canadian Bank of Commerce, he was posted to the bank's branch in Whitehorse in the Yukon Territory. Inspired by the vast beauty of the Yukon wilderness, Service started writing his poetry about the things he saw.
Service became known for his work about the West, and the Yukon goldFor alternative meanings, see gold (disambiguation Gold is a chemical element in the periodic table that has the symbol Au ( L. aurum and atomic number 79. A soft, shiny, yellow, heavy, malleable, ductile (trivalent and univalent) transition metal, gold d miners. Such works as " The Shooting of Dan McGrew " and " The Cremation of Sam McGee " made him famous around the world. After having collected enough poems for a book, Service offered a publisher $100 of his own money to publish the work, but the publisher was so sure that the works would be popular (he had already taken 1700 offers for sale off the galley proofs), he returned Service's money and offered him a contract.
Soon after The Songs of a Sourdough came out in 1907Events January events January 6 Maria Montessori opens her first school and daycare center for working class children in Rome Casa dei Bambini in San Lorenzo). January 14 An earthquake in Kingston, Jamaica kills more than a 1,000 January 23 Charles Curtis, Service became rich. He became known as the "Canadian KiplingJoseph Rudyard Kipling ( December 30, 1865 January 18, 1936) was a British author and poet, born in India. He is best known for the children's story The Jungle Book ( 1894), the Indian spy novel Kim ( 1901), the poems " Gunga Din" ( 1892) and " If ( 1895)". Within two years he was able to quit his job at the bank, and to travel -- to ParisEiffel Tower has become the symbol of Paris throughout the world. Paris is the capital and largest city of France. The city is built on an arc of the River Seine, and is thus divided into two parts: the Right Bank to the north and the smaller Left Bank to, the FrenchThe French Republic or France ( French: Republique francaise or France is a country whose metropolitan territory is located in western Europe, and which is further made up of a collection of overseas islands and territories located in other continents. RivieraThe Riviera is the coast shared between France and Italy, on the Tyrrhenian Sea, or the Italian Adriatic coast ("Riviera Adriatica"), on the Adriatic Sea. The Italian Riviera The Italian Riviera is the coast both on the west and the east of Genoa, known a, to Hollywood, and beyond. From 19121912 is a leap year starting on Monday (link will take you to calendar) Events January 1 Establishment of Republic of China. January 6 New Mexico is admitted as the 47th U. January 17 British polar explorer Robert Falcon Scott and a team of four begin the to 1913 he was a correspondent for the Toronto Star during the Balkan Wars. During World War I he was a driver for the American Field Service and a war correspondent for the Canadian government.
Robert W. Service married a woman from Paris and they purchased a summer home in the Brittany Region of France. At the outbreak of World War II he was in Poland and fled the country, going back to North America and on to Hollywood, California where he remained until the war's end, at which time he returned to his home in Brittany, France.
Service wrote two volumes of autobiography - Ploughman of the Moon and Harper of Heaven .
He died in Lancieux , Côtes-d'Armor, in Brittany and is buried there in the local cemetery.
Robert W. Service has been honored with a school named for him in Anchorage, Alaska, in Dawson City in the Yukon and in Toronto, Ontario. He was also honored on a Canadian postage stamp in 1976.
The works of Robert W. Service: