Giller Prize rose began as a tribute to founder's late wife

Author Elizabeth Hay, centre, is congratulated by author Alice Munro, left, and Giller Prize founder Jack Rabinovitch, right, after accepting the Giller Prize for Canadian literature for her book Late Nights on Air in Toronto, Tuesday, November 6, 2007. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/J.P. Moczulski)

TORONTO -- In Canada, Valentine's Day isn't the only time the rose gets the spotlight. The woody perennial is also the trademark of the annual Scotiabank Giller Prize.

On Tuesday, one of five shortlisted authors will win $100,000 at a glitzy literary gala that will be decorated with just over 1,200 long-stem roses flown in from South America.

Since the Giller's inception in 1994, founder Jack Rabinovitch has been sending out one long-stem red rose with each gala invite, along with decorating the annual black-tie soiree with the flower.

The Giller logo also has a rose in it.

It's a way to honour Rabinovitch's late wife, literary journalist Doris Giller, who loved to garden.

"When we started the prize, it was just probably 150 people who knew Doris, so when we sent out an invitation we just attached a rose to it because that's what I thought Doris would do if she was inviting them," he says.

"It just sort of took off and it was as simple as that."

Rabinovitch says Giller didn't have a garden at her childhood home, a three-storey flat beside a stable in Montreal. So when the two moved into their home, she took full advantage of her property and developed a green thumb.

Rabinovitch still has the rose bushes she tended to. When they bloom, they remind him of her.

But then again, "everything reminds me of her," he says of Giller, who died in 1993.

These days, Rabinovitch sends out about 250 to 300 gala invites to stars of the literary world and beyond.

"This has been going on for 22 years, so that's quite a few thousand roses," he says.

"It's quite amazing. What started off as just sort of a tribute has become standard now and everybody likes the idea so we just continued it."

In fact, gala attendees now "refer to their rose as opposed to their invitation," he adds with a laugh.

Giller event producer Jeff Perrin says a team of three women handle the gala roses in an assembly line the day before the event, taking their thorns off, fluffing them up and polishing them "to make them look their absolute best."

They then carry them over to the gala venue, putting them in the grand entranceway and in the flower arrangements on the tables.

"It's very funny to watch everybody after a couple of cocktails try to sneak flowers out of the arrangements," Perrin says with a laugh.

"It always starts at the beginning of the night and you can see people sneaking, and then as soon as you give them permission, it just turns into a free-for-all."

By the end of the night, the entrance "looks like a picked-over fruit market on a Sunday at 5 p.m.," adds Perrin, who has been the Giller event producer for the past five years.

This year's Giller gala is using thousands more roses than usual, in various shades of red.

"We really wanted to give (Jack) a year that was all about the rose, and so that's what we're hoping to do this year. This year it actually will have a different sort of feeling than previous years," Perrin says.

"It'll feel a little bit more special because we really just want to cover the place in roses, for Jack."