David Brown and The Thomson Mystery

Miles David Brown and the Thomson Mystery

Dave Brown, of Hamilton, was not only a well known outdoor educator in Ontario, he was an accomplished historian, book collector of considerable acclaim and had spent many years as a summer camp instructor. He was familiar with the lakes of Algonquin and his canoe had traversed hundreds of miles on these waters in quest of logging relics of which he possessed a significant collection.

Dave was a frequent house guest of hours while up on his camping excursions, and we enjoyed many conversations about nature, history and his favorite subject "outdoor education." Before Dave passed away after a short illness, I had agreed to be his biographer. His was a life well-lived, and he had so many interesting stories about people and fascinating places in this province, and oh so many adventures, that it warranted a much larger study than what I was able to provide without extensive interviews. He passed on just as we were in the planning stage of what was supposed to be a co-operative effort. While I did complete his biography it was only half what it could have been if Dave had been at my side.

I had talked to Dave many times during my early foray into the Thomson research, about whether or not the Canoe Lake Cemetery plot, that was once occupied by the deceased artist, was still "occupied," as was determined in the 1950's, during and impromptu exhumation by William Little, Jack Eastaugh and friends. The grave that was supposed to be empty wasn’t quite.....the broken sections of what appeared to be Thomson’s original coffin was found in the excavation, as were human bones. Everybody including family was surprised by Little’s revelations. I don’t believe they were happy about any of the publicity, and who could blame them. Tom had been a unique and fascinating character in life and his work was gaining huge acclaim at the time of the exhumation. It was obvious any information contrary to what had been accepted fact of his demise would have a sensational zing.

The problem with this is that shortly after Thomson was buried in July 1917, an undertaker by the name of Churchill, was sent by the Thomson family, to remove the coffin with his remains from Algonquin, to be re-buried in a family plot in the Village of Leith, near Owen Sound, Ontario. Churchill wasn’t aware at the time of his arrival at Canoe Lake, that the coffin had already been buried in the plot near Mowat, during a hurried ceremony earlier the same day. There has been concern over the years the undertaker didn’t quite fulfill the terms and obligations he was sworn. It has long been alleged that Churchill had only transported a box of Algonquin earth in the sealed metal casket, having decided not to go to the effort of digging up Thomson’s coffin....although he always denied this allegation. The metal coffin was tightly sealed and according to some witnesses at the funeral in Leith, the box had a musty odor but was never opened to confirm Tom was inside. There is another story that maintains Tom’s father insisted the coffin be opened, and it was, revealing the remains of his son. There are however, suggestions the seal was never broken on the metal casket and definitely not opened.

While we will go into this situation with more detail later in this series of columns, the "two grave" scenario, factors large in the Thomson mystery. According to Judge Little, Thomson is undeniably still buried at the Canoe Lake Cemetery. Even though forensic tests on the skull revealed it to be the remains of a native male and not those of Thomson, there are still concerns the testing did not go far enough before the remains were re-buried in the Algonquin cemetery. The plot in Leith has never been investigated.

Dave Brown was a friend to all, and he knew many folks with long histories at Canoe Lake and in Algonquin Park, from guides, Park Rangers, to cottagers. One evening shortly before his death, after asking me how my research was going on Tom Thomson, he told me quite bluntly that he had it on good and trusted authority, Thomson’s body was still in his original grave as he was committed in July of 1917. When I pressed him for more information he said he couldn’t betray the trust of his sources but said it would be hard to deny that these particular folks had a much closer connection to the circumstances of Thomson’s demise and initial burial. "I just wanted you to know that I have solid information from a number of people I have known up there, who believe Thomson was never moved from Mowat....and that the undertaker hauled back a metal coffin full of dirt to avoid digging the coffin up. To these people it’s not much of a mystery at all....he was injured during a fight, knocked unconscious, taken out onto the lake and dumped to make it look like he drowned. He didn’t. I’m telling you, he’s still in Algonquin Park....sorry I can’t help you any more than this."

Dave wasn’t a story spinner as such. He told a good story but he had the historian’s need for accuracy so when he told me this, while it wasn’t particularly useful to prove or disprove....because I couldn’t follow up with his sources (some were already deceased), it at least gave me some confidence there were dissenters who didn’t buy some of the information about Thomson’s death and burial.

I would have loved to pursue this with Dave but within weeks his condition had deteriorated and there was no chance of recovery. It is really the last full discussion I had with Dave and although it wasn’t a pivotal amount of information it at least let me know I wasn’t a fool to be following this up......as had many other researchers over the decades from Blodwen Davies in the early 1930's onward to Judge William Little and others to the present.

The Inner Storm of Tom Thomson

Note: When I initiated my research foray into the circumstances surrounding the death of Canadian artist, Tom Thomson, which commenced for me back in the mid 1990's, I had no idea that my interest in the story would be self perpetuating and offer no clear final chapter. In reality the story of Thomson has occupied my attention for more than fifteen years. Not solely the mystery of his death but his art work and life. His life is a most fascinating study. From the time I began a more intensive examination of his alleged accidental drowning, there were many splendid examples of serendipity playing a weighty role in discovery. One good source would direct to another, then another, and even unrelated sources often times provided some unexpected Thomson or Canadian art information that did influence the course of research. As an active regional Ontario historian for many decades now, serendipitous discovery is pretty much an anticipated part of the quest for information. We come to count on accidental findings to give us a hand up. Admittedly it can get a little spooky how these connections come about. For most of the first year there were few days that didn't have a Thomson intrusion in one form or another but it was all very welcome.

After my preliminary article on the death of Thomson (drowning, Canoe Lake, July 1917), carried by Muskoka Today, published in Gravenhurst, and then a larger series of columns in The Muskoka Sun in the late 1990's, I was getting help, advice and information from all over and much of it was in support of the murder theory versus the long accepted verdict by a coroner's inquiry, of 1917, that ruled Thomson had drowned. There were times during research and preparation for these columns that I very much felt the artist's presence..... as if he was as interested in my story-line..... as much as the readership was demonstrating, by offering me a plethora of clippings and personal opinions about the cold case. My wife Suzanne said to me one day that it was almost as if Tom was "sending a message from the other side." There are circumstances surrounding this story and these years of initial research, that did seem to border on the paranormal, particularly experienced on a canoe venture to Canoe Lake and a visit to Thomson's memorial cairn on Hayhurst Point. I will present the story of this unsettling traverse of Algonquin's best known lake, later in this blog collection.

This is not a story about Thomson's ghost. Although there have been sightings in the past, one in fact, by a member of the Group of Seven artists visiting the park sometime after his death. It is the accounting of an admirer's mission to shed more light on the Thomson mystery, as others have in the past......and how a wonderful artist's life, his work, and demise affected us, and other researchers intimately close to his story. My work on Thomson has been based on the utmost respect for the artist and I have never once received a penny of remuneration for any of the research and composition work I've published over the past 15 years, the last series running in Curious: The Tourist Guide, over 12 months in 2007. From the time I began working on this story in the mid 1990's, there has never been any attempt to sensationalize or to make a profit from content. It was written with the unfaltering respect and credit for those who broke trail on the research, such as Judge William Little (1970's book The Tom Thomson Mystery) and Blodwen Davies the first writer, in the early 1930's, to question the theory of accidental death versus murder most foul. It is a fascinating and compelling story....a Canadian legend that in some way or other makes it to print each year in some Canadian locale. Each year some camper will tell the story of seeing the ghost paddler on the cusp of nightfall, in that silent traverse of the Algonquin Lakes he was famous for. Most of all, it is out of a sense of awe for his art work, that I continue to find great inspiration to not only follow his canoe path but to re-visit some of the places he haunted, and depicted so powerfully on his wood panels.

The short piece you are about to read was written in the mid 1990's at a time when I had only just begun my research into his mysterious demise. I penned these observations while sitting on the shore of Canoe Lake with my family, watching a storm front-push over Algonquin. Tom Thomson would have adored the scene as it unfolded upon the lakeshore, finding a great deal of power in the confluence between the currents of air and water pounding like fist against this evergreen bordered, etched-rock shoreline. It was from our perspective, a Thomson day in Algonquin!

By Ted Currie

Each bold, smooth, wave of brush stroke, laps dark and deeply into the long furrow of emerging wake. The voyeur can feel its undertow reaching for his soul. The traverse imprints a profound and contrasting depth and breadth of shadow, paint and coloration, as impression whirlpools from the surface into the black confluence of the lake's history.

The paddle is thrust in a furious rage, deep below the surface of the boiling lake. Paint streams in a twist of art, fate and nature in a silhouetted passage across an open, mirrored universe. The manifestation upon the painter’s board began in this violation of event against reflection, as the paddle-stroke evermore propels the canoe toward the open bay.....the twisting event of storm unfurling along the horizon pines.

In this storied sanctuary, in the sage scented basin of legend and spirits, the artist finds the portal to oversee creation. A hallowed place to live and paint, one side in the actuality of Algonquin, the other in the ethereal current of ecstasy. The poet is the artist, the environs the pinnacle of enlightened observation, between realities and illusion, natural heaven and hell.

The devil stirs against a subtle divinity of calm. Above the contoured rocks on the distant shore, actuality is painted an ominous black against green. Demons generate free-will within the cavernous tomb of autumn storm, just this moment blocking away the sun. There is a threatening free-fall earthward of fear and trembling; a deep, vibrating roar beyond the jowls of stormscape. A hard, piercing, rythmic drumming of wind and rain, growing deeply fertile, fueled by the inspiration of still-warm air that spans the lakeland.

The first bite of ill-fame has clearly cut with a dagger point, across the uneven expanse of this once still life. The gale generated whitecaps rage along the blunt rock shoreline. Seeking refuge from the painter’s intent, the wind’s malevolent passion, the canoeist turns sharply back toward shore. The precarious balance between paddler and storm stages mortal and artistic co-habitation. It is the will of artist. The traverse must end. The cyclonic force at the heart of creative storm, will paint, without mercy, without apology, a soon-fatal blow. The paint-board presents this tragic wake, the biography of evasive yet found immortality.

A gallery voyeur has just taken a step-back, mindful that art and artist demand space in which to thrive. What then is this unsafe passage of imagination, but the cruel play now of creator on the unsuspecting?

This thrusting, bitter October wind pounds down against the Algonquin woodland with a brutal force, snapping limbs off the bare old hardwoods and sending the fallen leaves into a filmy crimson sheet, draping across the hazy passage ahead. The deeply rolling waves pummel the canoe, bashing against the stern, the wind and current beneath wrenching the bow toward the sawblade of rock.

It became impossible to make any progress up the shore toward Mowat. The bounce-back of waves off the rocks had become severe, and the only way to avoid capsizing, was to pull into the first shallow inlet. At times the manifestation of wind and whitecaps was so powerful that the wooden canoe seemed to lift fully into the air, a precarious, spirited flight across the peaks and valleys of this unfolding legend.

The irregular, unpredictable, violent thrusts of autumn gale, strike down upon this haunted lake with a murderous, determined, unfaltering stroke. A mournful, darkened sky tumbles along the horizon, the true rage of Algonquin storm yet to unfurl. The shrill and haunting windsong, of air current through the tight embrace of towering evergreens, enchants in a warning voice. There is no safe passage. The sharp slap and cascade of waves upon silvered rocks, the creak and groan of aged docks, holding as schooner planks in high seas, peaks the voyeur’s sense that the spirit-kind are at work, sculpting in essence the bust of a tragic hero.

Adrift in this cauldron of tugging undertow and battering wave, a tightly clenched fist of wind jerks stern then bow, inward hard against the rocks. Long canvas shards engrave windward, giving the appearance of razor-cut paper in the flight of a kite. A clench of malevolent history strikes upward against the wooden hull, now shattered and torn open violently to the flood of dark twisting current. There is an evil succession of crashing waves, a tangle of green serpents diving one through the other, in this constant, wicked caress of nature’s most evolutionary intent. Drowning in this abstraction of legend, the canoe-mate disappears into the fictional depths of our own spirit lake. The challenger of nature, the ignorant transgressor, is overcome today by manifestation of art and artist, brush stroke and inspiration.

The creator stops work abruptly, resting hand and brush on the open paint box, as if he has been suddenly disconnected from prevailing realities. It is necessary to re-acquaint with the storm’s fury, still etching across the white and black contrasted bowl of Canoe Lake. As the overturned canoe, wood against stone, bobs like a corpse in the foaming inlet below, the bare knuckle of storm-surge bashes down like a lover spurned. In the slow but profound fade of life-shade into death, at this precise moment of sacrifice, the protocol of legend has been satisfied. An ominous, transforming darkness encroaches upon the watcher’s soul; brush is returned to oil and board, as if carried by wind and wave; a spirited rush of energy from earth beneath, into conflict, toil and creation.

A poignantly haunted lakeland emerges in this new warm light exposed, over the cold clasping rigor-mortis of life imitating art.

Just when it appears a typhoon might at any moment unfurl from the deepest black of spiraling cloudscape, the trace golden lines of sun enhance in thin cuts, along the deep green and blue hollows of afternoon horizon. Striking imprints, curious painted evolutions of storm and legend, are roughly hewn from contrary environs of wild reality yet enduring sanctuary.

Suspended at this moment is a raw cocktail of vigorous inspiration and sage advisory, the firmly brushed imprint of fiction against actuality; the uncertain oblivion that exists between canoe and storm, reality and impression, and the artist at the mercy of raging emotion. A cold, wicked penetration of arctic air stabs into the flesh, while the warm intoxication of creation keeps artist at task.

In earnest devotion, and unfaltering faith, it is mindfully acknowledged by the creator, the story has been successfully composed. A re-animation of the dead, you might say. A fatal traverse of life and times, captured for posterity. The last brush stroke, an illusion, has chaptered painter within the storm. Fear and trembling, blood and soul, rock and sky, our mutual surrender to Algonquin in transition.

In the glow of a gallery light, the fury manifests anew, as if released in our presence, the passion and glory of ecstasy bestowed.

With every paddle stroke against the current, we revere the legend that brought us here. Faithful, silent witness to the spirit within the storm.

In tribute to Canadian landscape painter, Tom Thomson.