Service, Robert (William)

(born Jan. 16, 1874, Preston, Lancashire, Eng.—died Sept. 11, 1958, Lancieux, France) English-born Canadian popular verse writer. He immigrated to Canada in 1894 and lived eight years in the Yukon. His Songs of a Sourdough (1907) and Ballads of a Cheechako (1909), about life in the “frozen North,” were enormously popular. He became known as “the Canadian Kipling” with such rollicking ballads as “The Shooting of Dan McGrew” and “The Cremation of Sam McGee”. His other works include the novel The Trail of '98 (1910) and Rhymes of a Red Cross Man (1916).

Source: Encyclopedia Britannica