This new and revised edition of poems about the men and women of the North features the most loved ballads by Robert Service, and is illustrated with lively art by Marilen Van Nimwegen. While living in Whitehorse, Robert Service wrote The Cremation of Sam McGee, and other well-known poems. He wrote and published into his mid-eighties. He was quoted as saying, I just go for a walk and come back with a poem in my pocket.

    The poem about the shooting of the fictitious Dan McGrew was written soon after the gold rush in Dawson City was over; it is an unrelenting story of the greed, jealousy, loneliness and betrayal that were characteristic of the Gold Rush era, and how Dan McGrew became the hated target of a half-crazed miner.