When I was 12 years old, there was a ruckus one block from my childhood home on Wood Street in Hamilton. Sylvia Tyson was there, and there were lots of cars and a throng of media. It was the funeral of Stan Rogers at St. Luke’s Anglican Church in Hamilton’s gritty North End. I didn’t appreciate who he was at the time; I just remember laughing when my dad would sing his songs, especially when he’d come to the line: “Blow the dustcake from your nose.” Since then I have played the guitar and sang at many pubs, always including Stan Rogers songs in my set. I believe we have almost resurrected him on occasion, hollering out “Barrett’s Privateers” and banging glasses of Guinness on the table. His songs have brought me through numerous heartaches in my adult life.

—Anne Marie Pavlov