In their brief conversation, the subject of money and Shannon Fraser came up, with Winnie informing Margaret that a $250 loan Tom had made to Fraser two years earlier had not yet been fully paid back. This would be the loan Fraser wanted to purchase canoes for Mowat Lodge. At the time of Fraser’s request, Winnie had considered the loan “risky,” as she had been aware that Fraser had been unsuccessful in borrowing the money in Huntsville. She herself had refused to lend the funds to him, only to discover that Tom, who could far less afford it, had gone ahead and put up the cash.
The subject of the loan set her off on the subject of the Frasers, who, she claimed, had been charging Tom too much for his board at the lodge, among other things. “You see,” she wrote, “the Frasers were money grabbing as usual but it will all come back to them. It was awful of Shannon Fraser to charge cartage on the casket. When Tom the day he was drowned helped to cadge a boat for Shannon to rent. Never mind they’ll get it yet. As far as Frasers good faith he has none. Mark Robinson the Ranger hates him.”
This out of her system, Winnie then added that earlier in the spring of 1917, Tom had told her and her parents that he had gotten most of the $250 back from Fraser, though it had all come in small payments. She said it was a shame, because if she had known Tom had been this generous, she could have intervened and, through her store connections, obtained the canoes at wholesale prices and perhaps earned Tom $50 on his goodhearted loan.
George Thomson must also have inquired about Tom’s belongings, because Winnie enclosed a snapshot she’d taken of Thomson in the spring, showing him wearing a green plaid Mackinaw, which must have been recently purchased, since she added, “He also bought the Mackinaw trousers, socks & shoepacks he has on.” Her advice to George was simple: “I would think the best way would be to have the executor send for all his belongings, saying the estate required them, as Shan [Fraser] will sell the things & keep the money.”
As for anything that the Trainors themselves might still have from Tom’s numerous stays at the cabin on Canoe Lake, she said they could all “be had next year when we go back.” She told George that she had lost her letters from Tom “after our home was burned” but added nothing in explanation. It appears she was speaking of the Trainor house in Huntsville, not the cabin at Canoe Lake, but the extent of the damage is unclear. She did indicate, though, that among the lost letters was one “where he left the Frasers dissatisfied but he did not tell the reason till the Fall 1915. Then again Tom did not care for Martin Blecher.” Her letter is frustrating to read now: she hinted at so much without the slightest elaboration.
In closing, Winnie wrote that “Mrs. Fraser I think would see you got everything should you request it. I do not think Frasers deserve one thing. Tom no doubt was paying his board well, supplying fish work & etc. His canoes can be easily stored at the Lake. Tom ploughed and planted their garden & ploughed Larry Dixon’s garden too.” It seemed important to her that Shannon Fraser not have any of Tom’s possessions. “Tom,” she wrote in her final sentence, “would be greened if he knew all now.” Then she signed off, simply, “W.T.”
Winnie’s anger over the events of July 16–17 at Canoe Lake simmered on. A considerable time after the burial, Robinson bumped into Winnie at the Kearney train depot as he was heading for Brent, where he had been transferred, and, as he wrote later to Blodwen Davies, “she understood to give me a gentle calling down for something about opening the grave at Canoe Lake. I inquired Just what was troubling her and was told nothing at all. She is Very Blunt.”
Robinson seems oblivious to any possible reason for such bluntness, but in Winnie’s mind he would have been the one who denied her the right to view the body. He would have been the one who pushed for the quick burial of his friend and gained permission for that burial from Superintendent Bartlett. He was the one who had called in his cousin, Dixon, who brought along Flavelle with his casket to do a job Winnie considered completely botched. And finally, given the reference about “opening the grave at Canoe Lake,” it may be that the Canoe Lake gossip that the body had never been removed had reached her ears. As Robinson had been suspicious from the beginning that Churchill had failed to do his assigned job, she might well have blamed the ranger for any rumblings there might have been about opening up the gravesite to see if the body had indeed been removed. As the one most responsible for arranging the exhumation on behalf of the Thomson family, she would have been outraged over any such suggestion that she had failed the Thomsons.
For reasons that perhaps only he understood, Shannon Fraser soon began a whisper campaign about the lake that Thomson had committed suicide. Plewman made mention of it in his notes: “Shannon Fraser did say to me, and to others at Mowat Lodge that he believed Tom had committed suicide. He was engaged to Winnie Trainor, but had become so enamoured with the northland and his love of painting, that he would not make a good husband. She was coming up from the city to have a ‘showdown’. Tom, with his sensitive nature could not, as Fraser stated, ‘face the music.’ ”
Plewman’s observation that Fraser was openly promoting a suicide theory was mentioned by others over time. Perhaps this was a strategic move by Fraser, as he knew some of what was contained in those “ordinary boy and girl letters” Robinson referred to and which his wife, Annie, had snooped into. No matter what the possible interpretation—a baby coming or Thomson wanting out of a promise to marry—a suggestion that there was going to be a “showdown” between Winnie and Tom might help cover the tracks of what really happened the day Thomson went missing.
A bigger topic of conversation around the lake was the notion that Martin Blecher, Jr., might have had something to do with the tragedy. At the wild Saturday night party at the guides’ cabin, Thomson and Martin were said to have tangled at least verbally over the progress of the war. Others knew of the bad blood between Blecher and Thomson and, as mentioned earlier, it was claimed that Blecher had said to Thomson, “Don’t get in my way if you know what’s good for you!” as the party was breaking up. That exchange had been reported by some of the partiers. Then there was the curious case of the overturned canoe, which Martin and Bessie Blecher did not recognize—impossible, when you think about it—and did not investigate. Not to do so would have been highly irresponsible if, indeed, the canoe they saw was Thomson’s, which I do not believe it was.
George Thomson later wrote to biographer Blodwen Davies that he “had heard that there was some ill feeling between Tom and some man in that region. It was somewhat casually referred to by some one at Canoe Lake possibly one of the Rangers, but as this was while we were still looking for Tom and I was still hopeful of his safe recovery, I didn’t at the time attach any serious importance to the report.” He regretted that he had been on vacation when word came that Tom was missing and, given the more than a week it took to discover the body, that “I was obliged to return to work with little opportunity of investigating conditions surrounding his death.” As for the suicide theory, George dismissed it outright, saying that Tom had loved painting and was then beginning to enjoy “outstanding recognition.”
He then offered up his own theory as to what had happened. The key, he thought, lay in what had caused that blow to the temple “which I believe rendered him unconscious so that drowning ensued. Of course it is hard to say what caused the bruise. It probably was an accident though it is possible to have been foul play. Personally I have always favored the accident theory though I realize the possibility of foul play. The one thing clear in my mind is that Tom could never of his own impulse have put that bruise there and any conclusion based on a group of facts omitting this one is not a sound or justifiable conclusion to my mind.”
Viewed from the long-distance advantage of the present, these words from George Thomson seem increasingly relevant in terms of what happened in the weeks, months and early years following Tom Thomson’s death. “In any event,” he told his brother’s first biographer, “speaking for the family, we would very much deplore any discussion of the matter be
fore the public. Such a discussion would do no good and would likely result in much harm to Tom’s name.”
TEN POINTING FINGERS
Conspiracy theories often take some time to get rolling. Not every mysterious death of a known person comes with a grassy knoll. It took more than a century for the idea that Napoleon might have been poisoned with arsenic rather than dying of stomach cancer to gain much traction; same for the argument that Beethoven might have died of lead poisoning, even if accidental. Speculating on the death of Tom Thomson obviously began early but it took decades before the various theories found their legs.
The North Bay coroner’s declaration of “death by drowning,” in which Dr. Ranney confirmed the opinion of Algonquin Park superintendent George Bartlett, was the accepted explanation in the early days, months and years following the artist’s death. It was embraced by those who truly did believe, or perhaps preferred to believe, the coroner’s findings—and among these were Thomson’s immediate family, his friends and those with a vested interest in the value of his art.
Much has been said about the impossibility of his merely drowning, first argued by biographer Blodwen Davies in 1935, as there had been air in his lungs after the body was found. But it isn’t as simple as that. Science now accepts that there is no precise anatomical proof of drowning, that the old clinchers—water in the stomach, lungs, sinuses—are strong hints but not absolute signs. “Drowning” is often merely the last thing left when a person dies in a body of water and all other possible causes appear to have been eliminated.
Accidental drowning with extenuating circumstances was the chosen explanation for those with some familiarity with the situation. Annie Fraser, who may well have known far more than she was letting on, once even suggested Thomson had drowned while trying to hold onto and land a huge lunker of a lake trout that might have wound Thomson in his own fishing line. Dr. Taylor Statten II, who at three years of age was at Canoe Lake when Thomson died and has spent his entire life surrounded by the story, has a more familiar take on the death. “Dr. Tay,” as he is known to the Taylor Statten campers, bluntly told me in the summer of 2008 that, in his opinion, Thomson “was drunk, fell out of his canoe and drowned.” (That was the same opinion Jimmy Stringer offered up that day in the Empire Hotel before he himself drowned in Canoe Lake.)
But others were not convinced. Mark Robinson clearly had some mild suspicions at the time, and his suspicions only intensified over the years. The puzzle really began to grow in the early 1930s, when Blodwen Davies began collecting documents and materials concerning the death of the artist and became increasingly suspicious.
Since the official coroner’s report—which might never have existed—could not be located, Davies turned to Dr. Howland, the professor of neurology who had sighted the body off Little Wapomeo Island. He was the only medical person who examined Thomson’s body after his death. When Davies asked for Howland’s statement, the office of the provincial crown attorney sent her the following copy, signed “George” Howland:
Canoe Lake July 17–17.
I saw body of man floating in Canoe Lake Monday, July 16th, at about 10 A. M. and notified Mr. George Rowe a resident who removed body to shore. On 17th Tuesday, I examined boyd [sic] and found it to be that of a man aged about 40 years in advanced stage of decomposition, face abdomen and limbs swollen, blisters on limbs, was a bruise on right temple size of 4” long, no other sign of external marks visible on body, air issuing from mouth, some bleeding from right ear, cause of death drowning.
Curiously, Davies received another copy of Dr. Howland’s statement in the same week, this time sent to her by George Thomson. While the first statement would appear to be what Howland said as a witness at the coroner’s inquiry, the one sent to the family appears to be one he signed at or immediately after the inquiry:
July 17. 1917
Body of Tom Thomson, artist, found floating in Canoe lake, July 16. 1917. Certified to be the person named by Mark Robinson, Park Ranger. Body clothed in grey lumberman’s shirt, khaki trousers and canvas shoes. Head shows marked swelling of face, decomposition has set in, air issuing from mouth. Head has a bruise over left temple as if produced by falling on rock. Examination of body shows no bruises, body greatly swollen, blisters on limbs, putrefaction setting in on surface. There are no signs of any external force having caused death, and there is no doubt but that death occurred from drowning.
G. W. Howland
538 Spadina Av.
Toronto
The discrepancies are baffling. In the first, his given name is shown as “George,” though, in fact, it was Goldwin. The misspelling of “body” led Michigan lawyer Neil J. Lehto, author of Algonquin Elegy: Tom Thomson’s Last Spring, to conclude the error was made in transcription. Howland, after all, would know his own name. However, Howland’s original contention that the bruise had been on the “right” temple remains in the report signed “George,” whereas, in the copy sent to the Thomson family, the bruise is said to be over the “left” temple. Lehto believes that Howland, in fact, likely wrote both and someone else wrote “George Howland” on the first. The first he might have written for Ranney, the latter for the Thomson family when Tom Harkness requested an official report on the cause of death.
George Thomson did not tell Blodwen Davies about information that might have come to the family concerning the inquiry. But Harkness, the executor, had written to Dr. James MacCallum, Tom’s patron, on November 3, 1917, saying, “I at last received the burial order from the coroner at North Bay, and I am going to write him about the letters produced at the inquiry.”
It would appear that either Harkness never did follow up on that or that the coroner’s office did not respond to his request. The “letters” might have involved any matter at all, and the natural inclination is to presume they were those “boy and girl” letters between Tom and Winnie that Mark Robinson had dismissed as unimportant. However, my feeling is that, as Robinson had already given Hugh Trainor the letters to return to his daughter, these were not the letters in question. Harkness’s letters to Flavelle and others indicate a man concerned with an accurate accounting of finances—Harkness was a successful farmer—and his correspondence with Winnie Trainor shows an ongoing interest in any outstanding loan that might have been due Thomson from Shannon Fraser. He would have been greatly interested in any letters concerning debt or property. However, it appears that Harkness never did acquire the letters he had hoped to receive from the North Bay coroner’s office, if, in fact, any had been collected there.
In 1931, early in her investigation, Davies petitioned Ontario attorney general Colonel William Herbert Price to exhume the grave at Leith. She included an eleven-page summary of events, as she understood them, and asked in a cover letter if the attorney general’s office would act on her request. “[T]he important thing to Thomson’s friends,” she wrote, “is to know whether or not he still lies in Canoe Lake, and to clear his name of the charge of suicide.”
To add clout to her unusual request, she copied Sir Frederick Banting, the famous Canadian discoverer of insulin. Banting had become fast friends with several members of the Group of Seven. After his huge success in research science, which he struggled the rest of his life to equal, Banting had turned to the arts, hoping the group could help him learn to paint. And he also hoped that Davies could help him learn to write. According to historian Michael Bliss’s 1984 work Banting: A Biography, Davies and Banting were romantically linked at the time. (In 1932 their affair would break up Banting’s marriage, sending him to divorce court.) Banting became caught up in the Tom Thomson story and developed such an interest in the painter that by 1949 he claimed in the Toronto Telegram that “Canadian art is gradually reaching a national and distinctive manifestation, and its inspiration is Tom Thomson.” At one point he became so convinced that Thomson had been murdered that he spoke to a park ranger—likely Mark Robinson—about what had transpired in 1917, but said the ranger could provide no concrete details.
It is curious that when Davies published her biography on Thomson in 1935, she made no mention of Winnie, even though Mark Robinson, whose advice she followed on every other count, specifically directed her to seek Winnie out. We now know from Davies’ papers that she was wholly suspicious of Martin Blecher, Jr., but that she refrained from openly saying so in her book. As she had relied so heavily on Mark Robinson’s recollections, such suspicions likely came from the ranger. Robinson’s journals from 1917 include a May 14th note that Blecher had departed Canoe Lake for St. Louis. “I am of the opinion he is a German spy,” the ranger wrote. Four days later, he noted that Blecher returned to the park via the train from Renfrew. Davies questioned Blecher’s draft status in her submission to the attorney general, perhaps thinking that the possibility he was avoiding the draft, and perhaps even sympathizing with the enemy, might intrigue the authorities to look into his possible role in the artist’s death. None of this suggestive material, however, had any effect—the attorney general’s office showed no interest in re-opening the case—and when the book appeared there was nothing in it along these lines. She had no proof, of course, and Blecher was still alive when her book came out. He died of a heart attack at his Canoe Lake cottage three years later, in 1938.
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