12 | June | 2010 |

After touring the Jack London cabin, I ambled a block down 8th Avenue, plunked myself down on the boardwalk in the sun, and enjoyed my picnic of a sandwich, apple, and iced tea. I made some notes about London and contentedly waited the half hour or so before the start of the 1:30 Robert Service program. It had rained, hard, during the London presentation and more dark clouds were rolling in, so I savoured the brief moment of sunshine.

Lunch finished, I took some discrete shots of the Berton home. Pierre Berton is Canada’s best known writer of Canadian history, with his most famous books being Klondike and The Last Spike. He spent some of his childhood years in Dawson and had that home opened up and turned into accommodation for Dawson’s writer in residence. The unassuming green and white structure can be seen across from the Robert Service cabin and one block from the Jack London cabin, but there is nothing to visit.

Robert Service is known as ‘The Bard of the Yukon.’ A Scottish banker of English origin who came to Canada to be a cowboy and retired in the south of France a millionaire poet, he had an incredibly colourful life. While his best known poems, such as ‘The Shooting of Dan McGrew’ and ‘The Cremation of Sam McGee’, are about the Klondike gold rush, Service did not come to the north until a full decade past the rush.

After being transferred to the CIBC bank in Dawson, he quit and became a full-time writer. He spent some time living in a cozy log cabin on 8th Avenue. The cabin is just as it was back then and in the same location, and it is only the roof and birch steps which are not original. Or so our interpreter claims. 🙂

The program lasts an hour and is a mixture of fanciful retelling of Service’s life mixed in with a recital of his poetry. Our interpreter was perfect for the job. He was funny, obviously knew his stuff, and delights in it. This attraction is well worth the admission cost and makes for a fun afternoon.

Robert Service cabin

not quite what I expected; very pretty and homey!

birch twig steps

sod roof

path leading to 9th Ave trail

Service’s desk (or a replica thereof)

our Parks Canada interpreter who knew the poems by heart

This was written by Service on a piece of wall paper

the Pierre Berton home, now used as private accommodation for the writer in residence

Here’s my favourite Robert Service poem, which could have been written for me if you take the word ‘man’ as meaning ‘people of both genders. 🙂

There’s a race of men that don’t fit in,
A race that can’t stay still;
So they break the hearts of kith and kin,
And they roam the world at will.
They range the field and they rove the flood,
And they climb the mountain’s crest;
Theirs is the curse of the gypsy blood,
And they don’t know how to rest.

If they just went straight they might go far;
They are strong and brave and true;
But they’re always tired of the things that are,
And they want the strange and new.
They say: “Could I find my proper groove,
What a deep mark I would make!”
So they chop and change, and each fresh move
Is only a fresh mistake.

And each forgets, as he strips and runs
With a brilliant, fitful pace,
It’s the steady, quiet, plodding ones
Who win in the lifelong race.
And each forgets that his youth has fled,
Forgets that his prime is past,
Till he stands one day, with a hope that’s dead,
In the glare of the truth at last.

He has failed, he has failed; he has missed his chance;
He has just done things by half.
Life’s been a jolly good joke on him,
And now is the time to laugh.
Ha, ha! He is one of the Legion Lost;
He was never meant to win;
He’s a rolling stone, and it’s bred in the bone;
He’s a man who won’t fit in.

Dick North, a Yukon historian now based in Whitehorse, can be credited for finding the facts about novelist Jack London’s year in the Klondike. There has been so much myth and conjecture, but he found irrefutable pieces of evidence that form a picture of the year that served as a catalyst for London’s writing career.

Jack London was born into desperate poverty in Oakland, California. He laboured part-time as a child until he left school at 14 to work sixteen to eighteen hour days, seven days a week, at a pickle factory. When he’d had enough of that, he became an able bodied seaman and traveled to the most far flung corners of the world.

When news came to the outside world in 1897 that there was gold in the Klondike, London was ripe for adventure. He headed north with his brother-in-law, their outfit financed by London’s step-sister. London came over the Chilkoot Trail in August 1897, a year ahead of the column of people who would eventually make it to the gold fields.

Dick North found, while searching through archives, a photo of a group at Sheep Camp and by identifying each person in the photo he was able to identify Jack London. This photo is the only known photo of London not only on the Chilkoot, but in the north.

London made it to the Klondike and staked a claim at Henderson Creek, this fact supported by a document found by north: Jack London’s claim registration, dated October 1897 and signed in Dawson City!

While London was only in the north for a year, forced out by scurvy, it proved to be a transformative experience for him and inspired him to write many novels, the most famous of which is Call of the Wild. He sold the rights to this book to MacMillan publishing for a few thousand dollars. This book has not been out of print since and contributed to making MacMillan the powerhouse publisher that it is today.

As if the Sheep Camp photo and claim registration documents weren’t enough, Dick North found his holy grail: one of the cabins Jack London stayed in during his long, dark Klondike winter. This cabin was identified in two ways. The first is that it is described in perfect detail in one of London’s books. The second is a piece of graffiti: London’s signature in pencil scrawled on the inside of a wall.

The cabin was falling to ruin and at risk of getting lost in the wilderness. Funds to rescue it were hard to find, but when the city of Oakland got wind of North’s discovery it offered to finance the rescue on the condition that the cabin be brought to Oakland for display in their Jack London Square.

North decided that this wouldn’t do and he had a crazy, but rather brilliant, idea: split the cabin in two. There are now two Jack London cabins to be seen, one in Dawson, Yukon, and one in Oakland, California. The Dawson cabin’s bottom half is original while the top is a reproduction. The reverse is true for the one in Oakland!

Next to the cabin in Dawson is a bear proof food cache and a newer building that houses pictures and documents related to London’s life.

This excellent exhibit and talk from the Klondike Valley Association come with a $5 admission fee, but it’s only $2.50 upon presentation of an entrance coupon from Diamond Tooth Gerties.

Before I share pictures, here is a quote from Jack London that echoes something I said last summer about my own Klondike experience: