One huge benefit of being a book dealer is that you are constantly learning new things. Researching a new acquisition, its author, illustrator, press, subject matter, etc... Great for the brain – keeps it nimble, so they say. Not too much learning from Robert Service’s "The Cremation of Sam McGee". We have some of his early books and he and his first, and best, two poems - "The Shooting of Dan McGrew" and "The Cremation of Sam McGee" are very familiar to Canadians. Growing up, I often heard my mother quoting lines from these two poems, probably forced to memorize them as a schoolgirl:
There are strange things done in the midnight sun by the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales that would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights, but the queerest they ever did see
Was the night on the marge of Lake Lebarge I cremated Sam McGee.
However, there were two new things about this featured book: first I have never come across the publisher before, Kids Can Press Ltd., Toronto and second, I have never come across the illustrator before, Ted Harrison. What a talent!
Here is the detail that I uploaded onto Abebooks:
From the blurb – From the glory days of the Gold Rush when fortunes and legends were made and lost on the turn of a card, generations of dreamers in Europe and America have been fascinated by the romance and mystery of the Yukon. Yet no one has more evocatively captured the allure in the land of the midnight sun than Robert Service in his most famous poem The Cremation of Sam McGee. And perhaps nothing has more compellingly portrayed the ice in the Arctic air or the electrifying impact of the northern lights than the haunting paintings of Ted Harrison. What better combination then, than these two northern legends.
Pierre Berton – It is a joy to see these two unique talents combined. They have so much in common: a sense of discovery, a brashness, and a feeling of joie de vivre that is to be heard in the driving force of the Service narratives and seen in the dazzling vibrations of the Harrison art. Robert William Service (1874 – 1958) was an English-born Canadian poet and writer, often called "The Poet of the Yukon" and "The Canadian Kipling". Born in Lancashire of Scottish descent, he was a bank clerk by trade, but spent long periods travelling in the west in the United States and Canada, often in poverty. When his bank sent him to the Yukon, he was inspired by tales of the Klondike Gold Rush, and wrote two poems, "The Shooting of Dan McGrew" and "The Cremation of Sam McGee", which showed remarkable authenticity from an author with no experience of the gold rush or mining, and enjoyed immediate popularity. Encouraged by this, he quickly wrote more poems on the same theme, which were published as Songs of a Sourdough, followed by his next collection, Ballads of a Cheechako. Edward Hardy Harrison CM RCA LL.D. (1926 – 2015) was an English-Canadian artist. Beginning in 1968, Harrison resided in Yukon, Canada, a location with prominence in many of his works. He stayed there until 1993. He worked, from the 1970s and thus in his post-academic capacity, not only as an artist but also as an illustrator and author. His work in the field earned him a national first: selection for the International Children’s book Exhibition in Bologna, Italy. One of his illustrations is of the Robert Service poem "The Cremation of Sam McGee". He often tried unexpected colours to depicted features. In 1987, Harrison was made a Member of the Order of Canada for his contributions to Canadian culture. He also held honorary doctorates from Athabasca University (1991), the University of Victoria (1998) and the University of Alberta (2005) He was made a member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts. There is an active market for his art with a recent piece, People of the Lake, selling for over C$100,000.
Regular readers of my musings may notice that I did not introduce the featured book in the
same way as usual. I always have a picture of the cover of the book and of the title page. This
time, however, I have saved the best for last. This is what turns a very good book into a great
book!
