THE ENDURING MYSTERY OF TOM THOMSON -
95TH ANNIVERSARY OF HIS DEATH, JULY, 1917-JULY 2012
THE SPRING AND SUMMER SEASON, OF 1917, WAS ONE OF THE MOST PROLIFIC PERIODS, OF TOM THOMSON'S SHORT-LIVED ART CAREER. HE SKETCHED EVERY DAY THAT SPRING, CATCHING ALGONQUIN AT ITS REVIVAL OF COLOR. THE MELTING-AWAY OF THE LAST TRACES OF SNOW IN THE SHADED WOODS, AND THE CHANGE OF CREEKS TO TORRENTS OF WATER-FLOW, OVER FROTHING CATARACTS. HE WATCHED AS THE NEW GROWTH, IN THE LIGHT AND SHADOW OF EACH DAY, CHANGED THE LANDSCAPE ALMOST HOURLY. HE WAS INTRIGUED BY THE INTERPLAY OF WEATHER, ON THE SURROUNDINGS, AND BECAME VERY INTENSE, WHEN VIOLENT STORMS PASSED OVER ALGONQUIN. I HAVE READ SOME OVERVIEWS OF THIS PERIOD, THAT SUGGEST THOMSON MUST HAVE HAD A SENSE, HIS LIFE WOULD NOT BE A LONG ONE, AND TRIED TO PAINT AS MUCH OF HIS SURROUNDINGS AS HE COULD, BEFORE THE INEVITABLE END. HIS DEATH WASN'T A SUICIDE. IT WAS EITHER A CASE OF ACCIDENTAL DROWNING, OR MORE LIKELY MURDER. WHY WAS HE SO DETERMINED THAT SPRING SEASON, TO PORTRAY HIS ENVIRONS, AS HE NEVER HAD DURING HIS PREVIOUS STAYS IN ALGONQUIN?
I CAN REMEMBER, SO CLEARLY, MY FIRST VISIT TO THE TEA LAKE DAM, WHERE THOMSON USED TO FISH AND PAINT. HAVING WORKED ON THE STORY FOR ABOUT A YEAR, BEFORE ACTUALLY SPENDING TIME AT HIS FAVORITE HAUNTS, I FELT STRANGELY LIBERATED, AS IF IT HAD BEEN THE ARTIST WHO COMPELLED ME TO COME HERE, AND UPON ARRIVAL, SET ME FREE TO DISCOVER WHAT HAD BEEN HIS PARADISE ON EARTH. AT CANOE LAKE, I CROUCHED DOWN ON THE BEACH, AND LET THE WAVES LAP ONTO MY HAND, SATISFYING MY URGE TO CONNECT WITH THE BACKGROUND OF ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT STORIES I HAD EVER WORKED-ON; FOR EVENTUAL PUBLICATION IN NUMEROUS NEWSPAPERS AND MAGAZINES. THIS WASN'T ONE OF THOSE FEATURE JAGS THAT OCCUPIES YOU FOR SIX MONTHS, AND THEN ONCE IT'S PUBLISHED, YOU MOVE ON TO OTHER "BIGGER FISH." I KNEW THIS STORY WAS GOING TO BE DIFFERENT, MORESO BECAUSE OF A LIFE-LONG FASCINATION I'VE HAD FOR THOMSON'S ART WORK. THEY GOT ME THROUGH MY SCHOOL YEARS. MANY THOMSON, AND GROUP OF SEVEN PAINTINGS WERE REPRODUCED IN THE OLD SCHOOL TEXTS WE USED, AND EVEN WHEN THEY WEREN'T BEING USED, I'D TURN TO THE PAGE OF THE ART I LIKED BEST, AND I DAYDREAMED WHILE THE TEACHER WROTE ON THE BOARD. I WANTED TO BE IN A CANOE, ON THOSE ALGONQUIN LAKES, SEEKING OUT THESE NATURALLY ALLURING PLACES, THOMSOM CAPTURED ON HIS PAINT BOARDS.
I HAVE ALSO FELT A NAGGING NECESSITY TO PURSUE THE STORY BECAUSE OF THE INJUSTICE TO THOMSON. EVEN NOW, 95 YEARS AFTER HIS TRAGIC DEMISE, THERE ARE TWO GRAVES AND ONLY ONE ARTIST. HE WAS ORIGINALLY BURIED IN THE MOWAT CEMETERY, ON CANOE LAKE. THEN HE WAS EXHUMED, ONLY HOURS LATER, AND BY INSISTENCE OF THE THOMSON FAMILY, HE WAS SHIPPED IN A METAL CASKET, TO BE RE-BURIED IN LEITH, ONTARIO, NEAR OWEN SOUND. THIS IS WHERE THE ARTIST'S FAMILY HOME WAS SITUATED. IN THE 1950'S, AN EXHUMATION OF THE ORIGINAL GRAVE TURNED UP A SKELETON IN WHAT IS STILL BELIEVED TO BE, THOMSON'S ORIGINAL COFFIN. HOW COULD THIS BE? SOMEONE WAS HIDING SOMETHING. WHILE THE SKULL WAS EXAMINED BY THE AUTHORITIES, IN THE 1950'S, IT WAS DECIDED THE REMAINS DID NOT BELONG TO THE ARTIST. THERE HAVE BEEN SUGGESTIONS MADE, THAT GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS DID NOT WANT TO RE-OPEN THIS CASE, AND USED INFLUENCE TO SHUT-DOWN ANY FURTHER INVESTIGATION. THE SAME HAD OCCURRED MANY YEARS EARLIER, WHEN THOMSON BIOGRAPHER, BLODWEN DAVIES WENT TO THE ONTARIO PROVINCIAL POLICE, TO PASS ON INFORMATION SHE HAD GATHERED DURING HER RESEARCH, IN THE LATE 1920'S, SUGGESTING THE ARTIST HAD DEFINITELY BEEN MURDERED.
MY OLD OUTDOOR EDUCATOR FRIEND, DAVE BROWN, OF HAMILTON, AND ALL PLACES WILD, TOLD ME WITH AUTHORITY, THOMSON WAS STILL PLANTED IN THE ALGONQUIN LANDSCAPE HE ADORED. DAVE WAS AN AVID STORY SWAPPER, AND SPENT A FAIR BIT OF TIME CANOEING THE LAKES OF ALGONQUIN AND HALIBURTON. HE TALKED TO MANY PARK GUIDES AND COTTAGE-OWNERS IN THE AREA, AND IT WAS ACCEPTED FACT THAT THOMSON WAS STILL BURIED IN MOWAT. BUT THERE IS ONLY ONE GRAVE MARKER, BUT TWO GRAVEYARD PLOTS. THERE MAY EVEN BE DOUBT IN THE THOMSON FAMILY, TODAY, AS TO WHERE THEIR KIN IS BURIED. AS THE ALLEGED THOMSON GRAVE WAS EXHUMED TWICE, ONCE IN JULY 1917, AND THEN AGAIN, IN THE 1950'S, BY JUDGE WILLIAM LITTLE AND ARTIST AND TEACHER, JACK EASTAUGH (PLUS TWO OTHERS), WHAT WOULD BE THE CONSEQUENCE OF DOING IT ONE MORE TIME, AND COMING UP WITH THE BONES FOR A PROPER DNA PROFILE WITH FAMILY? IF THEY CAN PERFORM THESE TESTS SUCCESSFULLY ON CENTURY'S OLD BONES, THEY CAN DO THEM ON 95 YEAR OLD REMAINS, AND SOLVE THE MYSTERY ONCE AND FOR ALL. MORE THAN THIS, THEY WILL BE ABLE TO CONCLUSIVELY SAY, WHERE THOMSON IS BURIED. NOW THEY CAN'T. JUST BECAUSE THERE IS A GRAVESTONE IN THE LEITH CEMETERY, MARKING THE ARTIST'S RESTING PLACE, IT DOESN'T MEAN HE'S ACTUALLY IN RESIDENCE. POSSIBLY IT'S THE TIME, TO AT LEAST PLACE A GRAVESTONE AT THE TINY MOWAT CEMETERY, TO COVER THE "WHAT IFS" OF THE NEAR CENTURY-OLD COLD CASE. WOULDN'T THIS BE SENSIBLE, CONSIDERING THE NUMBER OF PEOPLE WHO STILL VISIT THE ALGONQUIN SITE, AS IF A SHRINE TO THE MEMORY OF CANADA'S GREATEST LANDSCAPE ARTIST? THERE HAVE BEEN CUT FLOWERS LEFT THERE BY VISITORS OVER THE YEARS. WHY ARE THEY VISITING? THOMSON'S GONE FROM THERE? OR IS THERE MOUNTING EVIDENCE, HIS REMAINS……WELL, "REMAIN" IN THE SAME MOWAT PLOT HE WAS BURIED, IN JULY 1917?
THERE IS NO QUESTION, IN MY MIND, THAT THOMSON'S MYSTERIOUS DEATH, HAS GREATLY CONTRIBUTED TO THIS LEGEND-BUILDING SITUATION. I'M NOT SURE HOW MANY PEOPLE VIEW HIS WORK TODAY, WITHOUT KNOWLEDGE OF HIS TRAGIC, UNEXPLAINED DEMISE. DO THEY KNOW, AS THEY'RE LOOKING AT HIS AMAZING ART PANELS, THAT HE MAY BE BURIED IN TWO CEMETERY PLOTS? DOES THIS INFLUENCE HOW THEY INTERPRET HIS ART? DOES IT CREATE A HAUNTING ENVIRONMENT, BEING IN THE COMPANY OF HIS ART PANELS? OR DOES IT DETRACT FROM THE APPRECIATION OF HIS WORK? THERE ARE THOSE ART HISTORIANS AND BIOGRAPHERS, WHO BELIEVE THERE MUST BE A SEPARATION FROM THE MYSTERY, WHEN EXAMINING HIS PAINTINGS. THEY BELIEVE THE LEGEND GETS IN THE WAY OF TRUE APPRECIATION FOR WHAT THOMSON ACCOMPLISHED, FOR THE CANADIAN ART MOVEMENT AT THIS TIME IN HISTORY. OTHERS BELIEVE IT QUITE THE OPPOSITE, AND THAT THEIR APPRECIATION IS MORE FINELY HONED, BECAUSE OF THE MYSTERY…..THE STORIES OF THOMSON'S GHOST CANOE BEING SPOTTED ON MOONLIT NIGHTS, TRAVERSING THE REFLECTIVE ALGONQUIN LAKES.
YOU BE THE JUDGE. DO YOU FEEL THE TOM THOMSON MYSTERY, AS JUDGE WILLIAM LITTLE TITLED HIS CIRCA 1970'S BOOK, DEALING WITH THE MURDER SCENARIO, HAS INFLUENCED YOUR INTERPRETATION AND ENJOYMENT OF THE ARTIST'S LANDSCAPES? THERE WILL UNDOUBTEDLY BE MIXED RESULTS. FOR ME, I BEGAN MY RELATIONSHIP WITH THE ART OF TOM THOMSON, AS A SCHOOL KID IN BURLINGTON, ONTARIO, LONG, LONG BEFORE I HAD ANY IDEA THERE WAS A MYSTERY UNFOLDING. I AM NO DIFFERENT, IN THIS REGARD, TODAY, AND I ENJOY HIS LANDSCAPES QUITE INDEPENDENTLY OF SUSPECTED FOUL PLAY. HERE NOW ARE A FEW OTHER NOTES I HAVE MADE OVER THE YEARS, ABOUT MY OWN RELATIONSHIP WITH THIS FASCINATING CANADIAN ARTIST.
Sunset encounters with the lone Algonquin canoeist
My very first trip to Algonquin Park after beginning research on the mysterious death of Canadian landscape artist, Tom Thomson, began and ended at the Tea Lake Dam. It had been one of Thomson’s favorite fishing locations, from the rocks bordering the rapids below the old dam. When I made my way down to the water-side that first day, it was as if I truly expected to encounter in one form or another,... his spirit, still hovering in the mist prevailing over that peaceful Algonquin alcove of water, rock and forest. It was as if for a moment in time, I was allowed to walk into one of his paintings to see from the inside out, how his inspiration had manifested by brush and paint onto board. I sat on a fallen log for a long while, listening to the gentle wash of shallow water rushing over the rocks mid-stream. When the sun burned away the morning vapor, the sunlight dazzled on the water as if there were diamonds tumbling along in the current. My sons threw small stones into the dark water to watch the splash and ripples generate in the sunglow, and giggled when the chilled water penetrated their shoes.....and toes. It was poetry in art. It was the comforting natural embrace of a most beautiful place on earth.....a place you could not casually dismiss, or forget amidst the memories of a million other visitations abroad over a lifetime. Here was the portal into legend, an entrance I willingly stepped through, in my own adventures into contentment, as author David Grayson once wrote about spiritual re-awakening, and explorations in nature.
I’ve spent many hours paddling the Algonquin lakes visiting places that had encouraged his studies and invigorated his ambition to capture stirring lakeland scenes from sunset and storm to spring re-awakening and haunted, spirit-full forests. On cold autumn evenings my wife and sons would sit for hours watching the fanning colors of the Northern Lights, over Tea Lake, another quality of the environment that had intrigued Thomson. There were friends and admirers of his work, who paid particular attention to his sketches of these enchanted rainbow lights, some remarking to him that the scenes were "cold and lonely" in appearance, and that pleased the artist, as this is what he had intended.
Whether we have been traversing picturesque Tea Lake, Canoe Lake, Smoke Lake or our favorite Rock Lake near the east gate, there is always a wonderful lingering aura of Tom Thomson....and many vistas around these lakes, at all times of the year and day, can remind one in a subtle way, of an Algonquin sketch made by his hand ninety two years earlier.
Those long time admirers of Thomson’s powerful landscapes may agree that Algonquin is forever haunted by his lake traverses by grey-green canoe. Pleasantly haunted of course. Each year there is a Thomson sighting.....a lone canoeist paddling gently, just after sunset, heading toward the watcher, only to disappear as strangely as it first appeared on the horizon. In William Little’s book, "The Tom Thomson Mystery," 1970, McGraw-Hill, pages 98-100, there is the first reference to the ghost of Tom Thomson.
There were persistent, year after year claims, all part of the escalating Tom Thomson legend, "that former guides had seen Tom in his canoe in various places in the Park. One such experience is described by a prominent summer resident in Algonquin Park only a few miles away from Canoe Lake. Mrs. Northway, her husband, and daughter Mary were vacationing in their beautiful summer home, Nominigan, on the east side of Smoke Lake. They had as their guest Mr. Lawren Harris, one of the Group of Seven’s leading artists and a close friend of Tom Thomson. Miss Northway recounts the following story, written verbatim as told her by her mother in 1931: ‘It was a very calm day last summer when my guide and I had been in a hidden, hill-locked lake, with the most diabolical modern apparatus to ensnare any unfortunate fish who would be taken in by the flashy advertising on a first class, well-hooked spinner. We had been up at dawn, and had travelled from lake to lake across portages which made my city lungs gasp, and over long stretches of still blue water into ponds where lilies bloomed. The winds had slept all day. We had talked through the hours, my guide and I, for he, as he smoked hand-rolled cigarettes, could discourse on many a thing and could weave tales of adventure or truth in which the incidents were all seen as under a strong magnifying glass.
‘It had been a happy day and ever so lazy. At dusk we were coming home, tired, rested, and at peace with the world. It was a tremendously still evening, you could hear the silence sing against your ear. The hills made strange, statuesque, figures against the haunting orange of the western sky, while the first star set its light akindle, as an altar lamp of the universe against the canopy of the afterglow. Even my guide’s tales had ceased, and through my mind drifted fragments of harmonies as if heard from a far away cello. Suddenly the voice of my guide shattered the silence. ‘They’re coming out to meet us from the portage.’ And turning toward the sunset I saw a man kneeling in a canoe that slowly came towards us. ‘So they are,’ I answered. ‘I guess we are pretty late.’
‘My guide turned from his course in order that we might better meet our herald, now a little less than a hundred yards away. I raised my voice and called and waved my hand, while my guide kept paddling toward the camper. But there was no response, for even as we looked the canoe and its paddler, without warning or sound, vanished into nothingness, and on the undisturbed lake were only our lonely selves and the shrieking loon." Miss Northway, in re-telling her mother’s story stated that "My father and Mr. Taylor-Statten, being practical people, on hearing the tale insisted it had been a mirage, but Lawren (Harris), a theosophist, was sure it was the spirit of Tom Thomson. His rationale was that those who depart before their time continue to haunt the lands they loved. My mother was inclined to accept Lawren’s interpretation much to my father’s disgust. A point that was much discussed but never settled, was what colour shirt was Tom wearing when he was drowned. (The ghost paddler had been wearing a yellow shirt)"
According to William Little, "This story of the phantom canoeist has become part of the saga of Tom Thomson. Lawren Harris, one of the last surviving members of the Group of Seven (now deceased), verified the above experience of his friend."
Maybe you are reminded of this curious presence while sitting at fireside, when you casually glance out onto the lake to admire the final rays of the July sun disappearing below the evergreen ridge. Possibly the sound of wind etching down across the hollows of the rock landscape, singing through the pines and knocking about the leaning birches, will remind you of a painter once. And maybe it will be the sound of water in the deep of night, lapping at the shore, that reminds you of the mysterious paddler, traversing the dreamy solitude, looking for a kindred spirit to awaken to the legend in which he dwells. It is not disturbing at all, to be in company of such an acquaintance.....enriching the grandness of Algonquin.
I would be delighted, absolutely enthralled, to have such an opportunity, to witness this spirited traverse of a misty Algonquin lake. Yet I have never visited this enchanted region of Ontario, and not, in some subtle way, been reminded of Thomson’s enduring stewardship of these magnificent lakes and forests.
Visit Algonquin Park this season and enjoy its spell-binding ambience. Just watch for crossing moose and other park wildlife. And watch for the lone canoeist!
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