S$# 030 Stan Rogers | Northwest Passage

Northwest Passage is a hauntingly beautiful song by one of Canada's folk treasures, Stan Rogers - he of the hauntingly beautiful baritone voice.

Throughout his tragically-cut-short career, Stan wrote and sang songs of Canada's history, through which he could always make the past come to life in the mind of the listener.

Northest Passage is the title song from Stan's 1981 album (the last one released during his lifetime). It details the brave, and sometimes foolish journeys of explorers who sought the mythical passage at the top of North America:

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.

...

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.

What really makes the presentation of the song even more powerful is that it's done a capella. On the chorus, he's backed by his brother Garnet Rogers, plus David Alan Eadie and Chris Crilly. On the verses, it's just Stan.

A couple of years ago when CBC Radio 1 compiled a list of the 50 greatest Canadian songs, Northwest Passage placed fourth. (I would have placed it first.) (It was surpassed only by Heart Of Gold, If I Had $1,000,000 and Four Strong Winds.)

Tragically, Stan Rogers died in an aircraft fire in 1983. (It's said that he selflessly helped others debark from the plane.) But his musical legacy lives on. You can buy his albums from stanrogers.net.