Paddling in the wake of Tom Thomson
The Canadian artist set out on his final canoe trip 100 years ago today
ALGONQUIN PROVINCIAL PARK, ONT.— On a rocky, windswept point jutting into Canoe Lake, up a little trail in a sunny clearing, a modest cairn stands next to a gaudy totem pole. One hundred years ago, a troop of artists and admirers, led by the Group of Seven’s J.E.H. Macdonald, paddled to this very point to erect the memorial to their dead friend, the “artist, woodsman and guide,” Tom Thomson. He lived humbly but passionately with the wild. It made
him brother to all untamed things of nature. It drew him apart and revealed itself wonderfully to him. It sent him out from the woods only to show these revelations through
his art. And it took him to itself at last. — Excerpt from the inscription on the Tom Thomson Memorial Cairn on Canoe Lake
It was here in Algonquin Provincial Park where Thomson found himself as an artist, setting out with his cedarstrip canoe and paint kit to collect inspiration for masterpieces such as The Jack Pine on protracted backcountry sketching trips he began taking in 1912.
And it was here, at Hayhurst Point, where Thomson most loved to pitch his canvas tent, with the wind keeping off the bugs and the cool, murky water shimmering below; then, at night, the lights of the nowabandoned town of Mowat sparkling across the lake.
And it was here, too, on Canoe Lake where Thomson’s body was found on July 16, 1917. He had set out on a solo fishing trip eight days prior on July 8 — 100 years ago today. He was only 39.
“(Thomson) discovered what to paint, what Canada was really about . . . No one showed you the rugged side of Canada.” GARRY LANTAIGNE ARTISTIC DIRECTOR, GROUP OF SEVEN OUTDOOR GALLERY
“Thomson did something that was the crux of what became the Group of Seven,” Garry Lantaigne says. “He discovered what to paint, what Canada was really about, which was the rocks and the trees and the water. No one had ever painted that before; no one showed you the rugged side of Canada.”
Like Thomson, Lantaigne was a Toronto-based artist who was drawn to the sprawling woodland and twisting lakes of Algonquin. Twelve years ago, Lantaigne made the move to the quiet cottage-country town of Huntsville, Ont., where he’s spearheaded the Group of Seven Outdoor Gallery, a project that’s seen nearly 100 murals of Thomson and the Group of Seven’s work painted on buildings across the region.
“Look at the colour of the lake,” Lantaigne excitedly implores as we stand under an enlarged depiction of Thomson’s Autumn Foliage in Huntsville. In the painting, a cluster of autumnal trees obscures a vibrant lake and rolling hills are washed in fall gold.
“It’s purple! Who sees purple in a lake?” Lantaigne says. “Thomson did. And he used that purple, which pushes and pulls all the yellows and oranges, and it sets depth, it sets up space — and it blows me away.”
Thomson’s lack of formal training was his grace as an artist, Lantaigne says, and it manifested itself in a euphoric style that his peers quickly emulated.
“You’re not supposed to use colours out of the tube when you paint, but Thomson had no problem with that,” Lantaigne explains. “He’s painting blue trees, red rocks, green rocks . . . and when he brought these paintings back and showed his friends, not one of them ever painted the same again.”
It’s a short drive to Canoe Lake, where Vince Ouimet of the Portage Store takes me on a guided tour of the artist’s haunts aboard an ashtrimmed canoe, with rawhide seats, that’s been painted “dove-grey.”
“Just like Tom Thomson’s,” Ouimet says. “Marine grey with a tube of cobalt blue.”
On the water, Ouimet points out Little Wapomeo Island, near which Thomson’s decaying body was discovered bleeding from its right ear, copper fishing wire wrapped tightly around one ankle.
At the time, the death was ruled an accidental drowning. Thomson was no stranger to the bottle, and a coroner figured he slipped and bashed his head during a portage. But since then, stories have swirled about murder and mystery, with fingers being pointed at a local woman believed to be the philanderer’s fiancée, as well as at a cantankerous German- American draft dodger who then lived on Canoe Lake. As for the line around his ankle, Thomson could have just been jigging for trout.
“And some people, since then, think that maybe he was dragged to the bottom of the lake,” Ouimet says.
We later paddle to the cairn (the garish totem was carved years later by a Toronto furniture baron), but first we visit the site of what was once Mowat: a mill town that had a population of just a few dozen souls in Thomson’s time. Today, all that remains are a few cottages along the lake and a ragged young forest where you can still find rusted cans and bed frames amongst crumbling stone foundations.
Thomson worked as a ranger and guide before he found the money to dedicate himself to his art. Between sojourns in the bush, he would stay at Mowat Lodge, which burned down not long after his death. Every member of the Group of Seven met Thomson up here for trips into the backcountry. In the winter months, holed up in his Toronto studio, Thomson would then turn his eight-by-10-inch wilderness sketches into the grand masterpieces that grace our galleries today. “He was in the woods without DEET, and he’s painting with black flies — there’d be black flies in the paint!” Ouimet says. “So, it speaks to who we think the painter is: he’s just this tough woodsman first.”
Ouimet leads me along a narrow, overgrown trail. Fresh bear prints are pressed into the wet mud ahead of us. With the mosquitoes and black flies coming at me, I wish I had something like Thomson’s corncob pipe to keep them away.
The trail leads up to a small, fenced clearing where an ancient white birch hangs over a headstone and a nearby cross. Thomson painted and took photos under this very tree, Ouimet says. The headstone, dated 1897, reads, “Remembers Comrades —(When Passing by) As you are now, So once was I. As I am now So you shall be. Prepare Thyself to follow me.” “We’re now looking at Mowat Lodge,” Ouimet says, holding up a reproduction of a 1914 painting, and pointing into the tangle of forest that covers what used to be the town. “You’d have the most beautiful view of the lake from right here.”
The cross is supposed to mark Thomson’s grave, Ouimet adds, but the real spot is a little further, 20 paces north of the fence.
I trample through the underbrush, taking exactly 20 steps, and find myself in a smaller clearing where a heaping pile of bear excrement steams glisteningly fresh. Ouimet is close behind me.
“Yeah, he’s around,” Ouimet says, eyeing the turd. “That’s a healthy bear.” Here, Thomson was hastily buried after his body was discovered, only to be exhumed two days later and moved to a family plot near Owen Sound, Ont., where the artist grew up. But doubts were raised about whether or not Thomson’s body was actually moved and, in 1956, a group of curious friends brought shovels to the site and discovered a skeleton with a hole in the left temple of its skull.
It is still unclear, though, if the skull was Thomson’s.
“Everybody around here believes Tom Thomson is buried here,” Ouimet says. “If you go to Owen Sound, he’s buried there.”
But the myth and mystery surrounding Thomson’s death shouldn’t eclipse his true legacy, Ouimet says: a sublime body of work that has influenced Canadian artists for over a century.
“There’s so many times that I’m paddling in the backcountry and I see a tree the way I’ve seen it in Tom Thomson’s paintings, or I’ll see a painting of Tom Thomson’s that reminded me of a trip,” Ouimet says. “So, when people say that Tom Thomson’s contributed so much to Algonquin Park, I tend to think it’s mutual: Algonquin Park contributed to Tom Thomson.”