Along the Shore

Author Chris Pascone with his family. The Duluth Rose Garden provides a beautiful backdrop for photos. | MARY RASCH

The Rose Garden

Where Duluth gets perfect

By Chris Pascone

DULUTH—Gardening in a gritty city with vicious winds off Lake Superior, winter temps to 40 below, and often dreary skies from October through April is tough enough. Building a garden of dreams on top of a concrete freeway tunnel raises the challenge. And doing it on volunteer gardeners’ goodwill makes it an even more otherworldly accomplishment. Yet Duluth’s Rose Garden is all this and more. It’s a piece of manicured perfection that rivals a proper English garden, with brick-lined paths, a stone fountain, and a marble gazebo. The city of Duluth had the vision, passion and commitment to spend vast sums on a rose garden over a freeway tunnel, making the Rose Garden a heroic feat of human ingenuity. And it all began from a European immigrant’s love of freedom.

The Rose Garden was designed in 1967 by Ausma Klints—an immigrant who settled in Duluth in 1951. Klints was born to a florist in Jekabpils, Latvia. Her 2007 obituary mentions her love for flowers and of freedom: “Escaping from a communist controlled country, she wanted to show her appreciation of her new freedom by starting a public rose garden for all to enjoy.” Her family credits her with “20 years of long hours of labor, so that we may all enjoy the present Rose Garden.”

Klints simultaneously formed the Duluth Rose Society, which raised $5,000 in donations to get the garden started. The society planted more than 2,000 rose bushes of over 70 varieties in the Rose Garden, which was designed in a series of perfect concentric circles, giving it the proper “English” style (Klints herself referred to it as “European”).

Disaster almost struck in the late 1980s, when the Rose Garden had to be temporarily removed to make way for the Interstate 35 extension into east Duluth. Again, volunteers came to the rescue: the Rose Garden was rebuilt in 1994 in its current home within Leif Erikson Park, perched atop 7 feet of soil resting on the Interstate tunnels, and the Lake Superior Rose Society was formed to care for it. This non-profit organization continues Klints’ spirit to this day, and the garden now boasts in excess of 2,500 roses and 12,000 non-rose plantings.

According to Carol Borich, treasurer of the Lake Superior Rose Society, its members are volunteer rosarians who help the city of Duluth maintain the Rose Garden by doing various seasonal tasks.

“Rose Society members assist the city park maintenance workers in “tipping” the tender roses in fall, and raising them from their winter protection in the spring,” says Borich. “During the summer, the members assist with properly pruning the spent blossoms to keep the roses in bloom, while teaching visitors and new volunteers the correct methods for this task.”

Borich adds that the vast majority of Rose Garden maintenance is done by highly skilled city staff tasked with caring for the Rose Garden.

The Rose Garden has over 250 varieties of roses, as well as other flowers. | ED LEE

But it’s not just roses that make the garden special—it’s the incredible view of endless Lake Superior from the garden’s open plateau. It’s the tooting of the North Shore Scenic Railroad trains as they bustle down the tracks below the garden. It’s the sailboats that ply the waters in view of the garden on Wednesday evenings in summer. It’s the runners, bicyclists, and skateboarders who glide along the Lakewalk within steps of the garden. This constant movement in all directions gives the Rose Garden its rhythm and energy.

These characteristics are captured by professional photographer Mary Rasch, who has framed the Rose Garden’s beauty in countless wedding, prom, and family photo shoots. She notes: “For me, the Rose Garden is like Alice in Wonderland—you have the roses, the benches with the swirl design, the scroll design at the top of the gazebo. It’s such a unique and well-manicured garden, it’s a draw for people.”

Rasch has her own personal story about the Rose Garden as well—she and her future husband had their first date there, their first kiss, and then (to keep the streak going) a marriage proposal, all from the same bench in the gazebo, surrounded by the luscious smells of over 250 varieties of roses.

The Rose Garden can be accessed from a free parking lot at London Road and South 13th Ave. East, and Rasch suggests the Rose Garden is a great starting point for a Duluth walking tour, without the Canal Park traffic.

So, could the Beatles have been singing about Duluth all along when they were “sitting in an English garden, waiting for the sun?” Go take a walk in Duluth’s Rose Garden and make the call yourself.

Fishing with Mom

By Chris Pascone

My mom taught me how to fish. She and I would walk down Northwest Road to our neighborhood stream in rural western Massachusetts and fish for native brook trout. There was a culvert under the road there, with a small pool on the downstream side perfectly sized for 6-year-old casts. Simplicity was the name of the game. A couple split shot, a plain hook and a worm.

“Let it sit on bottom,” my mom would say. “Give the fish a chance. Be patient.”

Just wait. That was maybe the best lesson I learned as a kid. Good times! We occasionally caught 8-inch beauties and pan fried them for dinner. These memories remain etched in my mind forever.

The author and his mother, Marion, with an exceptional steelhead caught on the Baptism River in Tettegouche State Park. The female was released, as per Minnesota steelhead regulations. | SUBMITTED

Fast forward 35 years to early 2020. We invited my mom to Duluth to help us take care of our 6-month-old daughter so my wife could go back to work. My mom drove out to Minnesota for the first time and covid hit the nation just as she was heading cross-country. She arrived on Saturday, March 21 and the next Monday, my employer—a public school—went to online learning. The plan was for her to stay for three months, until my school year ended, but I ended up working from home for those next three months. Suddenly, my mom and I ended up having a lot more time together.

That spring everything was as new to us as everyone else. I wasn’t expecting to stock up on 70 percent alcohol hand sanitizer at our local distillery. I wasn’t expecting to be home with my wife and three kids, plus my mom. We took it as an opportunity though. Our favorite pastime— fishing—had now become one of only a handful of things a person was allowed to do in society. And my mom was by my side.

Together, we made trip after trip down to the pier in Duluth to fish for coho salmon. This was our covid oasis. A huge stretch of concrete, still open to the public, with ample space to spread out. Those who have walked down the pier from the Lift Bridge in April or May are well aware of the draw this place has on fisherfolk. Early spring is the time of year to target salmonids within casting distance from shore. The time when us little guys, without big and fancy motor boats, have a shot at catching our dream fish.

The author’s mom, Marion, and her granddaughter, Adriana, on a cold, windy morning fishing on the South Pier in Duluth. Grit and determination to get through raw weather are key to early-season fishing. Family bonding during covid times made it all worth it. | SUBMITTED

What a nice irony that a manmade structure meant to protect ships from heavy seas can also serve as a meeting place for generations of fisherfolk, like my mom and me. These fishing trips brought us even closer together. We would stand for hours, watching our bobbers drift up and down in the current, then shoot below the surface if a fish hit, only to surface again—harmlessly—every time we missed the hookset. It’s a slow style of fishing, very conducive to talking. You stand and watch the water, doing almost nothing but wait. That’s what we did for three months. Sometimes early mornings before work, sometimes later in the day after online teaching was over. The pier became our sanctuary—our bubble—and fishing became our defense. It was our way of protecting ourselves, physically, out in the fresh Superior breeze, and metaphorically, by practicing continuity through the hobby and traditions we both enjoy.

The big ships coming through the canal would grab our attention when fishing was slow, and my mom ended up making a classy painting of the Lift Bridge. She was expecting the cold winds whipping off the lake to be a barrier to her, but in true Duluth style she adjusted to them and accepted them. She assimilated to the challenges of early spring fishing on Lake Superior—I was proud of her.

Often times, my older daughters would accompany us and go rollerblading on the pier while we fished. Other times we brought the baby too, in her carriage. She was already a part of Duluth fishing culture before she could stand up.

We had very limited fishing success (I did catch one wild steelhead that I released), but the pier for us was about more than the fish. It was about mother-son bonding and taking a stand against the pandemic-induced closures. It was about keeping our traditions and our sanity. It was about going back in time to those walks down to our neighborhood trout stream when I was 6 years old. It was about self-care and taking care of each other. Fishing can do that for people.

The International Friendship Gardens of Thunder Bay

By Elle Andra-Warner

THUNDER BAY—Visiting Thunder Bay’s International Friendship Gardens, created by the Soroptimist Club of Fort William-Port Arthur (now Soroptimist International of Thunder Bay), is like taking a relaxed walking tour around part of the world. This is no ordinary garden—rather, it’s a collection of 18 distinct garden areas and monuments representing a mosaic of ethnic cultures of the city’s immigrant residents.

It was 55 years ago that the 6.1-hectare (15 acres) garden park was unveiled by the Soroptimist Club and given as a gift to today’s city of Thunder Bay for Canada’s 100th Centennial in 1967. The park is located on the north side of Victoria Avenue at Hyde Park Avenue.

The Ukrainian garden monument. | ELLE ANDRA-WARNER

The project was built in two phases. In the first phase, gardens were dedicated to the Dutch, German, Italian, Finnish, Hungarian, Polish, Lithuanian, Slovakia and Ukrainian heritage communities in Thunder Bay. The second phase was for the Greek, Chinese, Filipino, East Indian, Scottish, Croatian, Portuguese and Slovenian communities, plus one garden representing Canadian heritage.

The park’s entrance arch has a flagstone bronze site plan to the garden sites. The individually-landscaped gardens are connected by paved barrier-free walkways, benches to enjoy the views, picnic tables, floral displays, and two man-made small lakes named Reflection and Soroptimist.

Journalist William Hryb wrote in an article about the Gardens (Papers & Records, 2012, Thunder Bay Museum Historical Society) that the park is “evidence that people can unite and build a monument to friendship.” It is something to remember during difficult times.

The Ukrainian garden is unique in that it has two gardens side by side. One represents Ukrainian religion, while the second is for the city’s Kuria groups. Its monument exhibits a cross which recognizes the Christianity in Ukraine and there’s also a black stone with two silhouettes: St. Volodymyr, the King of Kiev, and Olga, the country’s first ruler.

At the Polish gardens, a traditional monument honouring Poland’s royalty and heroes is on a high mound of earth surrounded by oak and linden trees. The Lithuanian site is on a high hill surrounded by a fieldstone wall with a plaque displaying the country’s coat of arms, which is one of Europe’s oldest national symbols; the monument’s figure is Smutkelis, meaning Guardian. At the German gardens, visitors can view a millwheel and a millhouse with a stream running into Reflection Lake; a plaque over the entrance reads about unity, freedom and peace to all mankind.

At the other 14 gardens and monuments, ethnic representations include a Chinese pagoda, windmill, a classic Doric column, a stone obelisk, bronze swans, distinctive statues, monuments with blue tile steps representing the waters of the world, and much more.

“A place of beauty,” wrote Hryb. “The magnificent park reflects the appreciation that the diverse cultures share with Earth.”

Magnus Theatre and the warriors of art

By Peter Fergus-Moore

THUNDER BAY—“I’ve been in theatre for over 26 years and I’ve never faced anything like this,” Thom Currie shakes his head. “I’m a natural optimist. When the pandemic started, I thought, ‘Two weeks and this’ll all be done!’ Nope. We shut down Sunday, March 15, 2020.”

Like so many public venues in Ontario, Thunder Bay’s Magnus Theatre went dark for the foreseeable future. As governments and health authorities Canada-wide struggled to contain the spread of the COVID-19 virus, Currie, Magnus’ artistic director, and staff struggled to figure out how to keep theatre working safely in the pandemic.

As the company tried to second-guess the pandemic (and governmental responses), Magnus laid off most of its staff briefly in the spring of 2020.

“But we are in the upper 50th-percentile of employers here (in Thunder Bay),” Currie explains. “We chose to bring the staff back, not for a week or two, but permanently.”

In an odd twist of fortune, the Magnus Theatre facility’s converted century-old building needed lots of renovation and upgrading. The 20 recalled staff had plenty to do. As the pandemic evolved, and restrictions were in constant flux, Currie hit upon an outdoor theatre venture for the fall of 2020. Magnus’ location adjacent to Waverly Park, with its new outdoor stage, was ideal.

“We called in the health unit and they inspected the premises, told us what needed to be done and put in place,” Currie says. “We also worked with the actors’ union for safety protocols for the cast.”

A Closer Walk with Patsy Cline— and then the weather struck. | SUBMITTED

A Closer Walk with Patsy Cline opened in September, 2020, with audience members sitting on portable chairs they had brought, and the cast on a makeshift stage off the parking lot. And then, as so often happens in the northwest, weather struck.

“There was this ebony cloud coming over the park—rain and hail,” Currie recalls. “We covered everything and ran. But the audience just sat there in the rain until it was over.”

As the sun reappeared, actors and staff looked at each other, asked the audience if they wanted the play to continue. The answer was an emphatic ‘yes,’ so after a few minutes uncovering equipment and readying the venue, Patsy Cline continued.

“Andrew Cecon, who was born and raised here, looked out at the audience and shouted, ‘You are Warriors of Art!’” Currie chuckles. “That was when I realized that if a hundred audience members stuck around in such a situation, we were doing something right.”

Magnus moved back inside that winter, again with a health unit inspection, with the theatre-in-the-round production of The Drowning Girls in November. Because of spacing and social distance restrictions, only 50 people at a time were permitted in the audience gallery. As well, Magnus struggled to mount a version of its Young Audience Tour for school-age children. Foreseeing another shut-down, Currie arranged to have the plays filmed with local actors and then screened at local and regional schools. Using Zoom technology for Q and A sessions, Magnus reached some 15,000 school children in the process.

Come September of 2021, Magnus was able to mount an indoors run of Home: A Bluegrass Celebration, with 50 percent audience attendance. Then the province allowed full audience capacity, but Currie was uneasy going that route.

“I took a long look at our audiences and asked people as they came out how comfortable they would be with full attendance,” Currie says, “and they said they weren’t. We stayed with 50 percent for that reason. People need to feel comfortable in our setting.”

Just as Magnus converted its auditorium back to its usual setup from theatre-in-theround in January of this year, COVID-19 tapped the world on the shoulder. With the Omicron variant on the loose, gathering places faced yet another shut-down. Currie jettisoned one production that would have been impossible to mount under the new circumstances.

Part of “two years of pivoting,” as Currie put it, includes more summer outdoor shows. “There is a thirst for that here.”

This summer, he hopes to remount Home: A Bluegrass Celebration, from the 2021-22 season, re-imagined for the outdoors. It will feature the same cast, all local actors, and allow up to 200 people at a time in the audience.

“It will be a full outdoor experience, with a bar, snack stand and lots else,” Currie says, adding that as Waverly Park is not part of Magnus Theatre’s property, he is anxious that Magnus not be in the way of other users of the park. Moreover, Magnus has just acquired a giant saddle tent that Currie hopes can be set up seasonally in the park, with fixed seating on risers so that people do not have to bring their own chairs.

Arguably, like its audiences, Magnus is a warrior of art—it was the only professional theatre in Canada to be operating throughout the pandemic period.