history by
Greg Nesteroff
The Kipling of the Kootenays Robert Thompson Anderson’s poetry paid tribute to the Silvery Slocan We’ve waited long with hopes deferred For brighter days to show A semblance of the good old times We had some years ago We’ve waited long and now at last Reward we’re bound to get For prospects now are bright’ning And Slocan you’re all right yet! — Robert T. Anderson
T
hey called him the Kipling of the Kootenays and the Bard of Lemon Creek. Though his name is no longer well known, Robert Thompson Anderson was among our region’s most prolific pioneer poets. His paeans paid tribute to life in the Slocan, his Scottish heritage, and after World War I, his comrades-in-arms. Despite only a Grade 4 education, by his late teens Anderson was composing poems of considerable skill, which probably relieved some of the boredom he felt working in his parents’ store at Lemon Creek, where the family arrived in 1897 from Manitoba. His work appeared regularly in the Slocan Drill and received rave reviews. In particular, a poem about the death of Queen Victoria, entitled The Message of Grief, caused a sensation, and was reprinted in many papers from Vancouver to Toronto. The Kootenaian wrote: “It is doubtful if very many of the thousands of poetic efforts that have flooded the press since the passing away of the great Queen have proven the equal of that by R.T. Anderson, the gifted young bard of Lemon Creek. The youthful poet gives promise of a remarkable career, and the Slocan is proud to be able to place him among the products of the richest district on earth.” Many of Anderson’s works were specific to Slocan and its environs, including Lowery’s Claim, Slocan is a Braw Toon, Slocan You’re All Right Yet! and The Three Candidates. The latter, about the 1900 race for Slocan MLA between Robert Green, George Kane, and John Keen, ended with the memorable line: “For Green is green/and also Keen/and doubtless so is Kane.” Anderson also frequently wrote poems in French Canadian and Scottish dialect. ➤
Above: Anderson published three books: The Old Timer and Other Poems (1909), Canadian Born and Other Western Verse (1913), and Troopers in France (1932). Left: Pioneer poet Robert Thompson Anderson composed odes to early mining days in the Slocan.
Summer 2012 Route 3
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