Question
I live in Ottawa, Canada and have the "Cardinal's Song, Peace and John Cabot as well as a yellow climbing rose.The soil is terrible, i.e. it seems to be dust more than anything and local cats have saturated the area with urine and feces.  I put moth balls and critter/ridder and other stuff to no avail.  When I water the water runs off the top of the dust so I dug around the roots, removed the existing soil and put  in a mix of sand, and triple mix but the water still runs off the top and the roots dont get any benefit and in fact it breaks my heart to see the one bush is drooping.  I water early in the  morning.  At the same time I also note black spot and got stuff to spray.  Help, Help!!

Answer
When you have poor soil and you want to grow roses you use your soil like containers. By that I mean you dig a 2 1/2 foot wide and deep hole, then fill it up with  store bought soil and mix in anything you have that will hold water. Such as any type of fine bark mulch, compost, old leaves, bits and pieces from the garden after tidying up the weeds. You can even dig up a clump of grass and put that in the bottom of the soil. Then plant your rose in the hole and put a thick mulch all around the base to keep the roots cool and the water in. However for your roses that are already planted, dig down again along side and place a piece of plastic plumbing pipe about 2 inches in diameter along the edge of the hole sticking up out of the top of the hole. Now when you water you will just place the hose in the top of the pipe and fill the hole up with water. Then the roots will definitely get watered. In regards to fertilizer, use a liquid type such as 20-20-20 mix it in with water and pour that down the top of the pipe each month until the end of August as you want the rose to harden off for winter not make more new growth.  
When a rose doesn't get enough water it will go under stress and that is when the black spot fungus will attack it. Don't worry about that this year as I think once the roses get water you won't have that problem next year.