The North-West Passage: Canada's Alternate Anthem

November 29th 2009... It is 60 years since Stan Rogers was born in Hamilton Ontario and only 26 years since his passing, on June 2nd 1983.

I feel, given significance of the day that I should share my favourite Stan Rogers moment.

I was watching T.V. flicking through the channels, working my way up through the 50's and 60's where you rarely find anything worth watching. but every so often you find a gem. This night would turn out to be one of those nights, As I flicked to this lonely forgotten channel, in the forlorned 50-70 range, I heard a song, It was solemn, lonely, sincere. It was mournful, and painful,

it was beautiful

i had never heard a song like this, I watched and listened attentively, it was as if i was having a musical epiphony.

I remember hearing the chorus

ah, for just one time
I would take the North-West passage
to find the hand of Franklin
reaching for the Beafort Sea
Tracing one warm line
through a land so wide and savage
and make the North-West passage
to the sea.

This was instantly imprinted in my mind, I ran to the computer to look it up on youtube, and probably listened to it 40 times over.

Everybody has had that moment, where a song just speaks to them, in some instances it is because the song is applicable to their situation at that very moment. Clearly I wasn't stranded in the North Exploring, I was sitting in my Toronto home in the middle of winter, but something about that mournful wail, something about Stan Rogers spoke to me. For weeks I was singing this song, humming it, whistling it, listening to it, learning the words, I was borderline obsessed.

But Winter turned to spring, and other songs filled my head, and while it was still a favourite, it wasn't at the forefront of my musical ventures any more, it had moved to the back of my head, with all the music I already knew and loved, pushed aside by other new music, other music that I was hearing for the first time.

Spring eventually turned into summer and I was excited to be volunteering at Mariposa Folk Festival, in Orillia Ontario, but on the saterday afternoon of the festival, I was particularily excited.

Nathan Rogers, the son of Stan Rogers, was playing the main stage. Nathan doesn't look much like his father, other than the fact that he as well as his father both began balding at an early age. But as soon as he started singing one of his songs; that was when you knew more than anything else about him, that he was the son of Stan Rogers, he had that exact same, shantyman baritone voice, that so many people adored.

Towards the end of his set, he made reference to his father, and a song that he thought was sort of an unrecognised alternate Canadian national anthem, and he asked everyone to please sing along, and as he started playing The North-West Passage, he sounded hauntingly like his father, everybody sang along, realising that in the world today, this is as close as you can get to Stan Rogers, this is his flesh and blood, these are his words, and his voice, out of another man. And though it was the middle of summer, I felt I was there, trying to navigate the North-West passage, with "David Thompson and the rest".
What I felt is inexplicibly hard to describe, I guess the best way to put it was, that it moved me, it touched me in a way that no song had before, and probably no song ever will. It would be like if you saw Johnny Cash playing hurt, which he cannot do beause unfortunately he has passed away.
So seeing Nathan Rogers was like seeing Stan Rogers play, because if you closed your eyes, Stan Rogers is who you would hear.
Later on that weekend I ran into Nathan Rogers, and I told him my story, of how much it meant to me, to hear him play that song, I forget what he said to me, but I could tell that he was glad to be playing the song, because it reminded him of his father, and he was happy to hear my story, happy that in a world moving so fast, where pop hits are coming in and out daily, that his fathers music, Now his music, could still move somebody this much.
Happy Birthday Stan Rogers
May you Rest in Peace.

Ah, for just one time I would take the Northwest Passage
To find the hand of Franklin reaching for the Beaufort Sea;
Tracing one warm line through a land so wild and savage
And make a Northwest Passage to the sea.

Westward from the Davis Strait 'tis there 'twas said to lie
The sea route to the Orient for which so many died;
Seeking gold and glory,
leaving weathered, broken bones
And a long-forgotten lonely cairn of stones

Three centuries thereafter,
I take passage overland
In the footsteps of brave Kelso, where his "sea of flowers" began
Watching cities rise before me,
then behind me sink again
This tardiest explorer,
driving hard across the plain.

And through the night,
behind the wheel,
the mileage clicking west
I think upon Mackenzie,
David Thompson
and the rest
Who cracked the mountain ramparts
and did show a path for me
To race the roaring Fraser
to the sea.

How then am I so different
from the first men through this way?
Like them, I left a settled life,
I threw it all away.
To seek a Northwest Passage
at the call of many men
To find there but the road back home again.

Ah, for just one time,
I would take the North-West Passage
To find the hand of Franklin
Reaching for, the Beaufort Sea
Tracing one warm line
Through a land so wide and savage
and make the North-West Passage
to the sea.

PV