Cold climate roses

It's so cold here that it's hard to think about much else at the moment. So it may seem surprising that I've got roses on my mind. Not just any roses, of course: cold climate roses. 

And none are more cold hardy than Canadian roses, both the Parkland series developed at Morden, Manitoba and the Explorer series originally hybridized at Ottowa, Ontario. In 1990, the Chicago Botanic Garden began six years of evaluating these roses. The results were compiled in a wonderful CBG evaluation report that you can download.

The Explorer series are, obviously, named after Canadian explorers. Wisconsinites learn about a few of them, like Marquette and Joliet, by default due to their Midwestern connections. But we name schools and prisons after them; never roses.

 

HENRY HUDSON EXPLORER ROSE

No, I learned about Canadian explorers via other channels: the "Simply Folk" program broadcast on Wisconsin Public Radio on Sunday nights. I'll never forget the first time I heard their names uttered by the late Stan Rogers in his a cappella song, "Northwest Passage," a paen to those early adventurers.

Rogers' song is considered a classic in Canadian music history and Stephen Harper, Prime Minister of Canada, has called it the "unofficial Canadian anthem." It is a song about the search for self as much as for the mythic "Northwest Passage;" of men defeated by hubris as much as by weather.

It's a timeless, moving tale that almost brings me to tears every time I hear it. This CBC program on the Arctic features the song's first verse and memorable chorus — sung in Stan Rogers' inimitable voice. 

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 wide 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.

The Explorer roses may bloom during the long, hot days of June, but it's in these dark, frigid days of January that I think on them and their namesakes. Not just the men mentioned by name in Stan Rogers' son — John Franklin, Henry Kelsey, Alexander Mackenzie and David Thompson — but all the intrepid northern pioneers memorialized with a rose. 

If you are a trivia junkie, here is a quiz about Canadian explorers and their roses. 

This picture, from the Alaska Image Library, showing ice in the Beaufort Sea, gives little sense of the dangers faced by polar explorers. I always see the "hand of Franklin" clutching the blood red rose named after him. Its color so hot it could trace the "one warm line" that Rogers sings about.

As for the Henry Hudson rose pictured above: Hudson is known to most Americans as the first European to ascend the Hudson River which is named after him. Hudson and his ship spent the winter of 1610/11 frozen in ice drifts in what is today known as Hudson Bay. Hudson, his son and a crew of seven all died after being set adrift by the remaining sick, starved and mutinous crew the following summer. The lovely Canadian Explorer cold-hardy rose, named for Hudson, perhaps offers us a subtle clue to his icy end. 

Comments

[Sarah Osborne]

I was hoping someone else might post a comment so I could say something other than, "I love that song, I love those roses, I love David Thompson!" So here goes:

The song gives me chills, but as a historian, I take issue with the "wild and savage land" approach (and with anything that Harper endorses, ugh). Gordon Lightfoot uses a similar theme in the Canadian Railway Trilogy, and it drives me nuts! It's this backwards-looking excuse for nationalism and it whitewashes our history of colonization.

I also don't understand why nurseries grow hardy roses grafted onto rootstock? We bought a Henry Hudson rose a number of years ago, not on its own rootstock (apparent later). It made it through 1 or 2 winters before dying (and I live in NS, so we aren't talking prairie winter), and I have attempted for the last decade to convince my mother to let go of the pest-ridden twigs that have grew up from the root. She's an eternal optimist, a laissez-faire gardener, and frugal to boot, though, so it's a losing battle.

[LINDA FROM EACH LITTLE WORLD]

Sarah — Thanks so much for those thoughtful comments. I think the same thing is true in the U.S. — lots of songs are are only enjoyable until the moment when you really listen to the lyrics and the underlying message.

I only grow one rose (Alba plena) but would no longer consider growing anything but "own root." There are enough problems growing roses that you don't want to have to worry that the dieback will mean that you're suddenly growing the rootstock rose. I love the old roses and David Austin roses but I don't have the sun and it can get cold enough here that I just enjoy them when I see them elsewhere and let it go at that.