Tom Thomson and The Spring Of His Life

A little spring rain can bring forth the beauty of the season as found on my front lawn with these beautiful Crocus .  I’ve been watching for the arrival of Ontario’s Flower The Trillium which should be appearing in the near future. - Photos By Fred Schulz

Note: This blog on Tom Thomson was written with all the prevailing influences of this writer's retreat at Birch Hollow, my Walden, here in South Muskoka

Tom Thomson’s Algonquin was the depiction of the Canadian North

     March. A tired old winter holding-on. Yet there is the smell of open earth coming from the hillsides where the sun has been strong and kind. There is the potential a mid-winter snowstorm might soon spiral away the bright cheer of this now sunny lake vista, as Algonquin storms are legendary for their suddenness and intensity. The warm bathing sunglow this morning, in a matter of moments, could be swept into obscurity by wind-driven snow and the darkness of tumbling cloud cover. There is an ominous cloud-bank currently rising behind the horizon evergreens. For the moment, I bask here in this spring-inspired morning sun, and think about the artist who painted transitional vistas such as this, and became as much a legend as the Algonquin landscape he documented.

"Thomson’s sketches had developed with breath-taking rapidity for four years. The climax came in 1917 when he began in early spring to paint a daily record of nature’s changing moods and aspects, even to the flowers. By July, he reported his project as virtually completed. The Frasers at Mowat Lodge saw him leaving in his canoe at noon on July 8 for an afternoon of fishing at Tea Lake Dam. The overturned canoe was found later that day, and his body was recovered on July 16. There were many rumors of foul play and much speculation about how the best-known canoeman of the north could have drowned by accident."

     The passage above appears on page 275 of the revered Canadian art history by J. Russell Harper, entitled "Painting in Canada – A History."

     In 1925, less than a decade after Thomson’s death, art historian, Newton MacTavish, in the book "The Arts in Canada," wrote the following passage about the artist’s impact on a nation, and on the international art community itself:

     "Then came suddenly, in 1917, the news that Tom Thomson had drowned in Algonquin Park. The occurrence meant, as far as art in Canada is concerned, more than might be suspected, because Thomson, although he lived in winter, in Toronto, almost as a recluse, and in summer as a bush ranger, had a considerable following. For he had attacked the north country with a big and exclusive design. And although he did not teach art, his work was an inspiration to others; and if ever it can be shown that there is in Canada a school of art, the beginnings of that school might be traced back to Tom Thomson."

     "I could sit down and cry to think that while in all this turmoil over here there is a ray of light, and that the peace and quietness of the north country should be the scene of such a tragedy," wrote Thomson’s colleague A.Y. Jackson, in a letter to associate painter J.E.H. MacDonald, shortly after he had received word of the drowning. Jackson, at the time, was in England awaiting transport to the battlefront in France, to paint the war record of Canadian soldiers in action, during the concluding years of the First World War. "It seems like the reversing of another tie which bound us to Canada, because without Tom the north country seems a desolation of bush and rock. He was the guide, the interpreter, and we the guests partaking of his hospitality so generously given," wrote Jackson in a letter dated August 4th, 1917." (Letter contained in "Painting in Canada – A History" by J.R. Harper)

Although the winter of 2009 had an early but gentle beginning, the late-winter rage has once again defined in sculpture, the dynamic of a Canadian winter. Standing on the shore of Algonquin’s Canoe Lake, you must not dismiss the remaining weeks of winter potential. It is a most beautiful frozen snowscape, sculpted with the heavy snow and windstorms of February. It was a scene Thomson would have approved, and sought out the right vantage point to more poignantly capture the effects of light and shadow, upon rock, windswept evergreens and late winter sky. It is a curious portal from which to view the natural world. It instills upon the watcher in the woods, a comforting solitude yet offers an immense invigoration of the senses. It was a place of great inspiration to Tom Thomson. Ninety two years ago this rapidly rising figure in Canadian art, was about to make his most intense study of the Algonquin re-awakening which would see the creation of many of his finest paint boards, depicting the colorations of this season of dynamic, vivid re-generation. It would end several months later with his alleged drowning, sometime between the evening of July 7th and mid afternoon July 8th, during a undetermined misadventure on this same lake.

     Tom Thomson’s reputation as a representative Canadian artist was emerging slowly by 1917 but there are few critics who would disagree, his ongoing success was virtually guaranteed if he had continued painting past that summer. The fact he died on this brink of fame, and did so tragically and arguably with an added measure of inescapable mystery, has become so intertwined over the years, it is impossible to separate the two aspects of insightful art and sudden demise. If Thomson had died of natural causes, much less attention would have been foisted upon his departure from this mortal coil, and all the focus would have been on his life and art. Like finding a jury member uncontaminated by freely expressed opinion or bias of a particular event, finding an art admirer anywhere who isn’t abundantly aware of Thomson’s sudden and mysterious death, is a rarity today just as it was in the years following the Canoe Lake occurrence.

     There are steadfast art historians who wish to remove the circumstances of his death well away from the interpretation of his art panels. Yet a few hale and hearty avengers, in the study of Thomson’s death, feel it is now an inherent, important patina of his work; not to take away from his artistic capability but as a legend within that begs us to take a second look,...... at not only his art but the mortal who so capably captured Algonquin’s natural, supernatural essence. I could stand on this frozen shore all day, feeling the company of Thomson’s spirit. I can easily imagine what it must have been like in that spring of 1917, when the artist first arrived to see that year’s spring emergence from the frozen, barren landscape. He found great beauty in this transition and re-generation of the lakeland.

There are those critics now, just as there were in 1917, and in all the years following his alleged accidental death, who flatly refuse to have anything to do with the so-called "Tom Thomson Mystery," so poignantly and intelligently presented by Judge William Little, in his well known book of the same name. It was the research-based text which formally introduced the full scope of the murder scenario to the Canadian public. His work inspired a landmark CBC film documentary which left little doubt, murder theorists had a great deal of corroborating evidence. In fact, it has been the deniers themselves, who have raised suspicion moreso than the foul play proponents, by their outright refusal to discuss the possibilities,...... on the grounds that it has no business in the discussion or consideration, now or in the future, of Thomson’s body of work. They believe, just as his associate artists agreed in 1917, that the memory of Thomson was not best served dredging up all kinds of nasty allegations warranting unwanted editorial coverage. As this was a profound and purposeful effort to disassociate Thomson from anything criminal, it smacked of a cover-up from the beginning, as uncovered fully by William Little in the late 1960’s. It wouldn’t be the first time that an intentional covering-over of an event, or crime, doubled or tripled the attention of the curious. Dogged investigators couldn’t help but wonder why clear evidence, on the case, was not provided during that summer’s Coroner’s Inquest, held at Canoe Lake.

     Many of the participants in the room at that time, suspected Thomson had been murdered but declined to raise their suspicion to the Coroner when given the opportunity. From the day Thomson’s overturned canoe was found in Canoe Lake, the mystery commenced. It wasn’t solely inspired by biographer Blodwen Davies, in the late 1920’s, who was the first to suggest to the public, foul play was the most likely cause of Thomson’s death. It didn’t arrive at the time an impromptu exhumation of Thomson’s first grave, at the Canoe Lake Cemetery, turned up a coffin and skeleton that wasn’t supposed to be there, and it certainly wasn’t created just by the release of the Tom Thomson Mystery. The mystery, and the patina ingrained in the work of Tom Thomson, began moments after his body was found and the rumor mill commenced its momentum of speculation......which has perpetuated through the decades.

     In fact there is ample evidence discussion about murder, was taking place before Thomson’s initial burial, prior to the Coroner’s inquest, and those stories carried on from that point, spun and embellished as they become generation to generation. Even if a writer had not touched the story in those early years, it would have emerged into the public domain sooner or later. Too many people had suspicions and were willing to talk about it, or Davies would have had no reason to involve the police in the case in the late 1920’s, during her work on Thomson’s biography. She found numerous individuals in the Canoe Lake community, willing to talk about the possibility a crime had unfolded in the circumstances surrounding Thomson’s death.

     One might reasonably conclude there was unresolved guilt, held by many friends of Thomson, who had failed to defend the artist’s honor when afforded the opportunity. They attended the inquest and held their peace so to speak, instead of confessing their suspicions. I’ve heard handed down stories even this past year, from a resident on Canoe Lake, offering unfaltering opinion Thomson was indeed murdered, and the killer was Mowat hotelier, Shannon Fraser. Whether it was Fraser or not, who had a hand in Thomson’s demise, this will be the mission of discovery for a future column. Were they scared of the consequences of fessing-up? Was their bond with the alleged killer stronger than their friendship to Thomson? We’ll examine these questions in future blogs.

     It’s getting colder here now and the wind is slicing painfully through my jacket. It has been an invigorating visit to the shore of Canoe Lake, one of my favorite places on earth. Take the time this summer season to visit Ontario’s Algonquin Park, and the legendary Canoe Lake.