About the Exhibition Title

The exhibition title "Seas of Ink" is taken from the preface of the Robert W. Service's book "Rhymes of a Rolling Stone" published in 1912.

I have no doubt at all the Devil grins
As seas of ink I spatter;
Ye gods, forgive my "literary" sins -
The other kind don't matter.
(view in pdf format)

Biographical Info:

Robert William Service was born in Preston, Lancashire, England on January 16, 1874 to Scottish parents. Educated at the University of Glasgow, Robert Service moved to Canada in 1894. He spent eight years in the Yukon working for the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, arriving in the Klondike several years after the peak of the Gold Rush. He was a correspondent for the Toronto Star during the Balkan Wars of 1912-13 and an ambulance driver in France during World War I.

A poet and a novelist, Service was known as "the Canadian Kipling" for his popular verse ballads of the "frozen North." Service's frontier ballads include "The Shooting of Dan McGrew," "The Law of the Yukon" and "The Cremation of Sam McGee" collected in Songs of a Sourdough (1907) later reissued as The Spell of the Yukon. The Trail of '98 (1910) is a vivid novel of the conditions in the Alaskan Klondike. Service also wrote two autobiographical works, Ploughman of the moon (1945) and Harper of Heaven (1948).

Service died in Lancieux, France September 11, 1958.

Online Resources:

• Selected Poetry
   from Representative Poetry On-line » »
• Rhymes of a Rolling Stone
   UofT Library Catalogue record » »
   Full text of book online from the UofT Library » »