TIMES PAST RobertW Service
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Last week’s Five Facts on cowboy in the Yukon Wilderness. Sir John Macdonald, the He worked on a ranch and Ramshorn Parish boy who as a bank teller in Vancouver became Canada’s first Prime Island six years after the Gold Minister, prompted reader Johnny Rush. He also travelled to Smith to remind Times Past of Hollywood, Cuba, Paris and another great Glaswegian who elsewhere, journeys which inspired
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made his mark over there. Poet his writing.
Robert William Service became Service published numerous known as the ‘Bard of the Yukon’ collections of poetry and the cabin where he stayed during his lifetime, and wrote some of his works in including Songs of a the early 1900s is now a visitor Sourdough or Spell of the
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attraction. Yukon and Other Verses (1907), Although born in which went into 10 printings Lancashire, England, Robert its first year. His most famous spent his early years in poem is The Shooting of Dan Glasgow and Kilwinning McGrew. When the First World in Ayrshire. He lived with his War broke out he became a war grandfather and three aunts until correspondent and ambulance his parents moved north to join driver on the front lines. He him. Johnny explains: “He went returned to Kilwinning in to Church St Primary, Kelvinside 1930 to erect a memorial to his Academy and Glasgow University. grandparents in the grounds of the
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The family lived just off Byres Abbey.
Road, in Roxburgh Street.” Several of his novels were Service’s first jobs in Glasgow were made into films, and he
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at a shipping office and a bank. also appeared as an actor After studying literature at in The Spoilers, a 1942 the University of Glasgow, film with Marlene Dietrich. He Service sailed to western died in the South of France in Canada in 1894 to become a 1958.