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Saint Stan:
The Making of a Legend

Stan Rogers plays with his uncle, Lee Bushell. Rogers recorded three of uncle Lee’s songs on his album For the Family. From the Stan Rogers Website.

The journey of “The Flowers of Bermuda” didn’t stop when Stan Rogers released it on his 1979 album Between the Breaks … Live! It didn’t even end when Stan Rogers died on June 2, 1983. In fact, it only took on its full significance after Rogers’s tragic and untimely passing.

Rogers’s death took place in the context of a larger tragedy in which 22 other people also died. He was returning home from the Kerrville Folk Festival in Texas on Air Canada flight 797, when an electrical fire caused many of the plane’s instruments to go out, while also causing the cabin to fill with acrid smoke. The crew made an emergency landing in Cincinnati and began evacuating the plane. Ninety seconds after the doors were opened, the fresh oxygen coming in from outside caused a flash fire. Stan, like all the passengers still in the plane, died of either smoke inhalation or burns.

What happened after the tragedy is fascinating to me as a folklorist. A legend grew up around Stan Rogers and what he supposedly did in the last moments of his life. According to popular stories, he saved other passengers from the fire before dying himself. In the words of his biographer Chris Gudgeon:

“The rumors started soon after the plane touched down. A woman – no one remembered who – recalled being pushed out the plane’s emergency exit by a giant, bald-headed man. It could have only been Stan Rogers. The story was embellished with each retelling: two women were pushed out the exit, then three. A near-unconscious woman was carried by a giant man to the emergency exit. As she reached the bottom of the evacuation slide, she looked up to see her rescuer turn back into the fire. Soon, Stan’s friends and fans were spreading the story – so widespread that it must have been true – of how he valiantly carried two women, one under each massive arm, out onto the wing of the plane before diving back into the inferno, in search of more survivors.”

The story didn’t stop there. Blogger Amber Frost recounted another variant, which incorporates a detail so beautiful it’s worthy of a Stan Rogers song:

“Before most likely succumbing to smoke inhalation, he used his last moments to guide other passengers to safety with his booming voice. I’ve heard more than one Canuck proudly declare that for all Rogers’ odes to Canada, he was never more Canadian than in his final words: ‘Let me help you.'”

U.S. government photo showing the damage to Air Canada 797 in 1983. From the Federal Aviation Administration.

Is any aspect of this legend true? Alas, almost certainly not. Most versions of the story defy common sense, for one thing. Think about the last time you got off an airplane. Would a burly six-foot-four man going against the flow of traffic have been effective in helping people exit? Of course not; he would have prevented other people from getting off. Moreover, it’s difficult to imagine even one rescue being accomplished in the ninety seconds between the plane’s landing and the flash fire. As for Frost’s account, to guide people to safety with his voice, wouldn’t he have to be outside? Otherwise wouldn’t he have guided people to where he was, still inside the burning plane?

There’s also no evidence of any heroic actions. Air Canada 797 is not an obscure accident. It’s the reason there are smoke detectors in lavatories and running lights along the floors of planes. Every person who survived was interviewed. The National Transportation Safety Board wrote an exhaustive report, which they then revised after the crew complained. You can read both versions online, here and here. There has even been an hour-long TV episode about it. To my knowledge there is no firsthand account, and no official report, of any passenger doing the things that Stan Rogers is credited with.

It’s not even clear Stan was alive when the doors opened. The people who died were all subject to smoke inhalation for a half hour and then suddenly engulfed in flames. No one reached their charred bodies for some time thereafter. No one can be sure how or when in the sequence of events they died.

For all these reasons, none of the official biographies on the Stan Rogers website, nor any of the ones on reputable encyclopedia sites like The Canadian Encyclopedia, mentions any heroism on Rogers’s part during the Air Canada 797 tragedy. Chris Gudgeon’s biography and Garnet Rogers’s recent memoir (which I highly recommend), allude to the legend but don’t treat it as fact. Indeed, as Gudgeon points out, the legends about Stan’s death continued to develop until they passed the bounds of the possible:

“At the funeral, it is said, a statue of the Virgin Mary began to vibrate. A lone eagle soared above the gravesite and landed on the casket just as it was about to be lowered. Since in truth there was no burial at all, it’s clear that some of these rumors are the product of overactive imaginations. From the ashes of flight 797, a new figure emerged: Saint Stan. He was an extension of Rogers’ Maritime Stan persona, only rougher and saltier still, with a heart of gold, a golden voice, and not a spot on him. Garnet calls it the ‘Elvisization’ of his brother. In death, we discovered Stan Rogers, bigger than ever.”

Garnet Rogers, Paul Mills, Stan Rogers, and Jim Morrison play at the Rebecca Cohn Auditorium in Halifax. The stage is dressed to look like one of the ships Stan wrote songs about! From the Stan Rogers website.

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