Originally Posted by
DougG
Congratulations from me also on your recovery and victory against the odds.
But I have to say that you're the first person I've "met" who knows who Stan Rogers was. I live in Michigan and am close enough to Canada that we picked up on his music quite a while ago and have most of his CDs. But now, even in Canada, I'm not sure how many people remember him. I remember a a friend who came back many years ago from a vacation in Nova Scotia who said to me something like "What's the deal in every bar in Halifax where everyone keeps singing this Barrett's Privateers song?" I've never been there but I wonder if anyone's still at it.
Goddamn them all, I was told, we'd sail the seas for American gold,
Fire no guns, shed no tears,
Now I'm a broken man on a Halifax pier, the last of Barrett's Privateers.
I'd love to be able to say that Stan Rogers was a friend of mine, though I never met him. My love of his work started in 1982, with purchase of
Northwest Passage. His music helped get me through some of the worst times of my life. We own every one of his albums, and used to sing his songs to keep ourselves awake and alert on long drives. About a year after his untimely death, I spoke with Ariel Rogers by phone. I sang her a modification (in memory of Stan) of the last verse of
MacDonnell on the Heights. By the time I finished we were both in tears. He was my kind of people.
Folk singers and their ilk (including filkers) still remember him and his songs. Many Canadians are surprised that I know the history behind
Northwest Passage.