Robert Service’s great-granddaughter honours her ancestor
Robert Service’s great-granddaughter honours her ancestor. Charlotte Service-Longépé wrote Robert W. Service La Piste de l’Imaginaire.
Robert Service
A stroll along the Writers’ Block
Dawson City would not be nearly as well-known as it is without the writings of three men who lived here for parts of their lives. This year we will once again be celebrating all of their lives and works with a stroll along the Writers’ Block, that portion of Eighth Avenue where they once lived. …
An Old-fashioned public reading at Jack London Square
Of the five writers who have attracted folks to come and visit buildings and gravesites in the Klondike, that are attached to their names, Jack London was the first.
Authors on Eighth celebrates Klondike literature
Each summer the Klondike Visitors Association (KVA), honours the memory of four writers who have meant a great deal to Dawson City and the Klondike: Jack London, Robert W. Service, Pierre Berton and Dick North.
Big City Girl in the Land of the Midnight Sun
Chapter 1: The Midnight Sun June 7, 2017 I am writing this at 10:30 p.m. with no lamp. This is my third night here in Dawson. I think it’s crazy that the days and nights blend into each other. Dark is not dark. Dusk is not dusk. Dawn is not dawn. It’s the land of …
Big City Girl Goes to the Midnight Sun
Diary of a Big City Girl’s experiences in the land of the midnight sun. Adventures from summer of 2017 in the Yukon.
Celebrating the Klondike’s Literary Legends
During the week that leads to the Discovery Days weekend, the Klondike Visitors Association, Parks Canada and the Writers’ Trust of Canada celebrate the writers who have made Dawson City world famous. Part of this event, called Authors on Eighth, is a writing contest that began in June and ended in July, in time for …
Filling the Gaps in Our History
“Everyone talks about the Goldrush. I’m interested in the gaps in history. The points in between,” says Yukon writer Michael Gates, author of From the Klondike to Berlin. Published last month, this book is, perhaps surprisingly, the first to offer an in depth account of the Yukon’s contribution to World War I. Gates says that …
Where Tradition and Youth Converge
The fiddling tradition is alive and well in the Yukon thanks to the Fiddleheads, a group of young fiddlers ranging in age from 7 to 14,
Home for a Yukon Spell
When my parents drove the Canadian Shield to Whitehorse 34 years ago in a rusted, steel blue Pontiac, they were unaware of the lifelong curse they were casting upon me. No, my parents are not wiccan worshippers, or practitioners of the Craft, just a couple of Ontario born kids who had a dream of carving …
Yukon / Utopia
In “Spell of the Yukon,” Bobby Service suggests, The realm’s Utopia—snock snarls of forests; Avalanches that out-grumble politicos; Gold that outweighs paper dollars backed by zeroes; Where the cussedest blizzard outlasts even August; And extra white comes snow, pure as a virgin’s Lust; Where dew fanatically lavishes each grass blade; Damned good is muck where …
Dawson in a Fictional Sense
About the same time as I was reading Elle Wild’s very entertaining mystery novel, Strange Things Done, I happened to watch a discussion between best selling novelists Stephen King and Lee Child. Part of the discussion was about settings, and Child noted that he had set one of his novels in New York, a city …
The Trail of 98 Shows Another Side of Robert W. Service
Though best known for his 15 collections of verse (a term he preferred to poetry in reference to his own work) Robert Service also wrote novels. Between 1909 and 1927, he produced some genre material: adventure, mystery, science fiction and horror. The first of these was The Trail of 98: a Northland Romance, written in his …
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Strange things make a great story
Inspired by the Yukon winter and the road closures that lead to a feeling of isolation, Elle Wild wrote her first crime novel and set it in Dawson City. The novel, called Strange Things Done, won the Arthur Ellis Award 2015 for Best Unpublished First Crime Novel from the Crime Writers of Canada. Based in …
Stories for Gold
Each year the Klondike Visitors Association works with the Writers’ Trust of Canada, Parks Canada, and the Dawson Community Library to put on the Authors on Eighth Walking Tour during the week before Discovery Days. Connected to that event is the annual Authors on Eighth Writing Contest, which challenges would-be authors to emulate the work …
Flat Feet and Brave Hearts: The Yukon at War
Canada was part of the British Empire, so when war was declared by Great Britain on August 4, 1914, Canada, too, joined the the conflict. There was a tremendous upswing of patriotic fervour. The vast American influx during of the Klondike gold rush had been largely replaced by a more settled British population, eager to …
Germans love Jack London
Why is Robert Service so much better known here than Jack London? This question comes from Wolfgang Robert Greiner, one of five German journalists I was invited to meet for breakfast at the Aurora Inn in late February. Their primary literary interest is in Jack London, whose Yukon themed short stories were standard fare in …
Crazy ’bout a Mercury
Local musician Ryan McNally really does have himself a Mercury, which he definitely does cruise up and down the road.
How The Double Bob Bash Came To Be
Despite claims of memoirists galore, who say they walked the Chilkoot Pass with Robert Service, the man now known as the bard of the Yukon arrived in Whitehorse via the White Pass and Yukon Route train in 1904. The shine was well off the Gold Rush at this time. Born in Preston, Lancashire, England, Service …
Parking Lot Cowboys: off the grid in Whitehorse
rri Johnny Paladin says, “Have you ever been to Montana? Why is the sky so big there?” He’s trying to explain the allure of the Yukon; he keeps interrupting himself to talk about the air and the grandeur of the sky. He compares it to Montana, and makes a circle with his thumb and pointer-finger …
Northern Gifts
Some gifts take time sinking in; others stare you in the face. We, our family of four in a VW Beetle, arrived late in Watson Lake on October 1, 1957, and awoke in a strange house, beside the lake. Outside, in brilliant sun, and “a silence you most could hear,” as Robert Service described it, …
The Klondike Echoes Down through the Literary Years
The Klondike has been the inspiration for a great deal of fiction since the Gold Rush, beginning with Jack London, who came with the Stampeders and left with a mother-lode of inspiration that would make him the wealthiest name-brand author of his generation. A decade later, the same inspiration seized a quasi-hobo and reluctant bank …
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No folly to come up to the Yukon
Five guys are sitting, standing or dressing in this small makeshift room. I’m on the floor, my legs on steps leading back down to my corner, where I store every costume I’ll need for the Frantic Follies, the Yukon vaudeville show. Lyall Murdoch sits on a chair next to the mirror and make-up table wearing …
Yukoners Are Different
“There are strange things done in the land of the midnight sun…” -Robert Service Truer words may have never been written by that famous Bard of the North. There were plenty of strange things done back in the days of the Gold Rush and there are plenty more still being done today in the Yukon. …
Roy, The Kindred Spirit
“How’d you get here? Why’d you stay?” Ubiquitous phrases heard in the Yukon indeed. With the sheer number of transients coming through the territory, it’s a natural inclination to pose these questions to the ever-increasing population of the North. The getting there. Some people have long stories, grand tales of wanderlust adventuring, where they suddenly, …
George McConkey Breathes Life Into the Harmonica
George McConkey has a new album out that displays his song writing ability and features some great classic tunes. More on that later, first, a digression. I’m a humble little bit of tin and horn/I’m a byword, I’m a plaything, I’m a jest; The virtuoso looks on me with scorn/But there’s times when I am …
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World of Words: Modern-Day Mythology on 8th
Celebrate Northern literature on August 13 during Authors on 8th, a literary walking tour through the lives of Klondike authors Jack London, Robert Service and the Bertons, Laura and Pierre. “There’s a huge mythology about the North that both Jack London and Robert Service created,” says Rachel Wiegers, the marketing and special events co-ordinator for …
That Little Old Log Cabin on the Hill
There are strange things found on the Internet when you’re surfing just for fun. There’s misinformation galore and yet, there’s no way to get it undone. I won’t even apologize to Robert Service because I’m here to defend his honour. Case in point: www.planetware.com. If its reporting on other topics is as sloppy as that …
Looking Back: The real Sam McGee
Sam McGee was a real person, but nothing like Service’s character. He stole the name off of a deposit slip.The two men never knew each other.
The “True” Tale of Diamond Lil
There are, as Robert Service noted, strange things done ‘neath the Midnight Sun. There have also been some strange things written, not the least of which would be some of the poet’s own verses and a few of the saltier tales of Jack London. The story told by “Diamond Lil” in her memoir, The Tragedy …
