Northern Light

by Roy MacGregor

  Tom Thomson I love you therefore I apologize

  for what I must say but I must say

  damn your jack pines they are beautiful

  Thomson has been the subject of art projects by Joyce Wieland and by Andrew Hunter. He has appeared in numerous short stories, including Barbara Smith’s “Tom Thomson and Winnifred Trainor” in Passion and Scandal: Great Canadian Love Stories, in which Winnie’s pregnancy is an issue. In “Have You Seen Tom Thomson?” by Wayne Wright, Winnie Trainor appears again, but this time as an exquisite ghost in search of her lost love. Thomson is even the subject of children’s books: Larry McCloskey’s Tom Thomson’s Last Paddle and Patrick Watson’s Ahmek, a tale narrated by a Canoe Lake beaver and featuring an illustration by Thomson’s great-grandniece, Toronto artist Tracy Thomson.

  Every year seems to bring another article, perhaps a book or two, a new documentary (the most recent being Dark Pines: A Documentary Investigation into the Death of Tom Thomson, directed by David Vaisbord and produced by Ric Beairsto). The popular Canadian rock band The Tragically Hip included Thomson in a popular song (“Tom Thomson came paddling past / I’m pretty sure it was him”). And Canadian folk-singer Ian Tamblyn even wrote a song (“Brush and Paddle”) that dovetails perfectly with Sherrill Grace’s theory that this country is forever reinventing the artist:

  Brush and paddle—stroke by stroke

  The northern rivers of your public schools

  I was seen down every hall

  Can you see me clearly now?

  I come to you alive as any colour ever splashed upon a canvas

  The promised greens of springtime,

  the threatening grays of fall Algonquin

  There seems so little time to paint it all

  …… I am your invention

  I am your great need

  And Thomson—why Thomson is my name.

  Sometimes the various “inventions” take unexpected twists. A 2009 exhibition by Winnipeg multimedia artist Diana Thorneycroft at the McMichael Canadian Art Collection in Kleinburg used Tom Thomson and Group of Seven backgrounds to poke a little fun at—some would say “ridicule”—the artist legends. The show, called “Canada, Myth and History: Group of Seven Awkward Moments,” included twenty-two thematic photographs, including one of Saturday Night Live hosers Bob and Doug McKenzie drinking beer and barbecuing with Thomson’s Early Snow as a backdrop. Another used Thomson’s famous Jack Pine as backdrop to a camping scene in which two plastic toy men are seen in embrace inside a tent while another toy man stares from behind the rocks, Thorneycroft’s “awkward moment” suggesting that Tom Thomson was murdered by a jealous boyfriend.

  The effect of all this attention, of course, has been to make Thomson increasingly famous in his own country. Like countless other cultural flames that seem to have been extinguished far too quickly, the after-burn has become even brighter with the passage of years.

  The ever-increasing fame at home also had its international effect, highlighted by an exhibition of Thomson’s work at the famous St. Petersburg Hermitage in the fall of 2004. Russian critics raved about the fifty-eight works that were sent—including The West Wind and The Jack Pine. A review in the daily Vedomosti said the first thing visitors would notice “is that the landscapes of the founder of Canada’s national artistic school have much in common with our own masters of the Russian landscape.” Another reviewer said the scenes felt so familiar to Russians that “[p]erhaps this is why we feel such a bond with this work.” Yet another, writing in Moscow’s daily Kommersant, thought the easy comparisons not quite right. “Thomson’s gloomy, slightly wild-eyed vision is alien to the formal, academy-trained landscapes of our Russian painters,” wrote art critic Kira Dolinina. “Thomson represents the unique national artistic heritage of a still very young country, Canada.”

  Canada was indeed “young” when he painted—Thomson died on the fiftieth anniversary of Confederation and in the same year as Vimy Ridge, the World War I battle that is so important to Canada’s history. By the country’s Centennial year, 1967, Thomson had become an icon in a former colony that was now flying its own flag. And by the start of the twenty-first century, his “unique” art was more prized than ever. In late May of 2008, a small Thomson sketch, Pine Trees at Sunset, sold for $1,957,500 at a Sotheby’s auction held in Toronto. That price beat the old record for a tiny Thomson sketch, set only six months earlier at a Ritchie’s auction, when Spring Thaw sold for $1.46 million. A week earlier, his sketch Tamarack Swamp (Sketch No. 5) had sold at Heffel’s in Vancouver for $1 million. Other Canadian paintings had sold for more, but these, remember, were sketches done virtually on the run, Thomson often working as quickly as he could because of the bugs. The oils were slapped fast onto boards smaller than a sheet of office stationery. “When it comes to bang per buck per square centimetre,” wrote Globe and Mail critic James Adams, “he’s the undisputed champ.”

  With such incredible sales for tiny sketches Thomson often gave away to people he barely knew, it today seems incredible that Thomson, self-proclaimed “bum artist,” would ask little or nothing for his own work. He once contacted MacCallum to see whether his longtime patron might sell one of the little sketches he’d taken back to Toronto with him.

  “If I could get $10 or $15 for it,” Thomson wrote, “I would be greatly pleased—if they don’t intend to put in so much, let it go for what they will give.”

  Just prior to the Sotheby’s auction that saw one of those “$10 or $15” sketches go for nearly $2 million, Winnipeg-based art dealer David Loch suggested that “the legend of the man and romance of the story” have likely had as much to do with prices as the magnificent art itself. “He’s really our van Gogh.”

  TWENTY JIMMY’S TRUTH

  I still think often of little Jimmy Stringer sitting in that nine-dollar-a-night Empire Hotel room back at the end of March 1973. Yes, he had been drinking—polishing off that second bottle of $2.20 Brights President sherry—and yes, he might well have been pulling my leg, along with Tom Thomson’s, when he claimed to have had the painter’s shinbone back in the Stringer shed on Potter Creek at the north end of Canoe Lake.

  But he said something that was inarguably true that day before he himself would drown in Canoe Lake when he broke through the ice and went down with his groceries. “The truth’s still not told, Laddie.”

  The story of Tom Thomson and Winnifred Trainor is one of circumstantial evidence, missed opportunity, speculation, theorizing, wild guessing and, in the case of some who have become caught up in this tantalizing mystery, blind prayer that what they said might actually have been what happened. I myself may be guilty, though I have always tried to keep an open mind to whatever the truth may be, wherever it may lie.

  And yet, over the years and decades, various pieces have fallen into place. Some have even fit together perfectly, while others have been forced together and yet others will apparently never find their place in the solution to this Rubik’s cube of Canadian history, which seems forever just out of reach.

  There have been pivotal moments that have changed the landscape as dramatically as if Thomson’s own brush were still at work: Blodwen Davies’ 1935 study, which first openly raised the possibility of foul play; the 1956 dig that initially raised as many questions as bones; the 1969 CBC documentary and William Little’s 1970 book, which actually pointed a finger at a suspect, even if the wrong one; Daphne Crombie stepping forward in 1977 to say what Annie Fraser had told her about the events of July 1917 and the letters that suggested Winnie Trainor and Tom Thomson had to get married; the revelations from the Huntsville Forester “Personals” section that raise so many questions concerning the winter Winnie and her mother spent “staying with friends near Philadelphia”… I can hope only that within the pages of this book there is more to consider, perhaps even at times enough to persuade.

  To state what may already be the obvious, here are some thoughts on what I believe happened:

  Winnifred Trainor truly believed, o
r had been led to believe, that she and Tom Thomson were to be married. She was at an awkward age for the small-town society in which she lived—unmarried at thirty-four, a spinster whose only prospect was to spend much of the rest of her life caring for aging parents. So Thomson’s arrival at Canoe Lake was the answer to her dreams if not her actual prayers. He was handsome, charming and single at thirty-nine; it was time for a man to settle down.

  I have always puzzled over the attitudes of two men I knew well concerning Thomson. In all that was said about Tom Thomson early on—his good looks, his athleticism, his charm, his brilliant talent—he strikes a heroic and highly attractive pose. Yet my grandfather Tom McCormick was so contemptuous of the man that he could barely bring himself to speak his name. The same was true of Ralph Bice, the legendary Algonquin Park guide and trapper. Both McCormick and Bice were cut from the same cloth: God-fearing, upstanding, hugely admired men who neither drank nor smoked nor swore. Bice claimed Thomson had girlfriends all over the park. Even Winnie Trainor’s dearest and most loyal friend, Dr. Wilfred T. Pocock, said he had quickly learned of Thomson’s reputation for “inveigling the women” once he himself arrived in the park not long after Thomson’s passing.

  Those two men—McCormick and Bice, who was something of a surrogate grandfather to the McCormick family—quite disliked Thomson for reasons they never spoke of. Was it simply because he drank? because he didn’t appear, to them, to have a real job? because he kept various romances sparking about the Algonquin Park area and who knows where else? or because of something he had done to Winnifred Trainor, sister-in-law to McCormick’s brother and close friend of the Bice family?

  Did Thomson plan to follow through with the alleged promise of marriage? I suspect not. Winnifred Trainor’s family and my own family were convinced that they were truly engaged, but there was no official proof and no ring exchanged. It was always said, as proof, that Thomson had booked “the honeymoon cabin” at Billie Bear Lodge, but there is no evidence of any such booking, even though Billie Bear lore maintains it did happen.

  The key to Thomson’s intentions, I suggest, lies in the camping equipment he shipped to South River under care of his friend Ranger Tom Wattie. It included a small, high-quality tent manufactured by Abercrombie & Fitch of New York, a sleeping bag, waterproof pants, a brand-new sleeping cot (still in the shipping box) and other camping items.

  The tent appears to be the one Winnie Trainor told the Thomsons that Tom had purchased in 1915. The camping gear had been quietly kept by the Wattie family for decades and donated to the Algonquin Park archives in 1997 by Gord Wattie through his nephew Ken Cooper of South River. This intriguing information was not available to the writers and documentary makers who tried to unravel the Tom Thomson mystery in the 1930s, the 1960s and the 1970s. It fits, however, with the letter Thomson wrote in April 1917 to his brother-in-law Tom Harkness, saying, “I may possibly go out on the Canadian Northern this summer to paint the Rockies but have not made all the arrangements yet. If I go it will be in July and August.” It may well be that Tom had no intention whatsoever of following through with any promise that might or might not have been made to Winnifred Trainor—or of following through with what would have been considered his “duty” to her if, in fact, a child truly was coming.

  This is not to suggest that Tom had no feelings for Winnie. They did indeed get along and, obviously, shared a great many letters—though not necessarily all “boy and girl” notes as Ranger Mark Robinson believed. Winnie was good company for Tom when both were at Canoe Lake, and when he was travelling through Huntsville, the Trainors were friendly and inviting. They provided him not only with company, but also with meals and often accommodation—a boon for a painter with little money of his own. When Tom was at Canoe Lake and they were not, the Trainor cabin was a wonderful place in which to hang his sketches to dry. He often gave sketches as gifts to Winnie and might well have wished her to have some of the forty or so spring sketches that were removed from the Trainor cabin that day in July 1917, even before it was known what had become of the missing painter.

  It may even be that Tom Thomson saw in Winnifred Trainor his future wife, but not just yet. He had places he still wished to paint. His life had a pattern—head for the bush in spring, paint in Toronto in winter—and he liked it fine. From his few letters and the accounts of those around at the time, he was in a happy state in the days before he went missing. Though his amazing spring output had a manic air to it—and I agree with those who say Tom was manic-depressive—I do not believe he committed suicide, as Shannon Fraser claimed in the gossip he immediately began to spread after Tom disappeared. I do not believe he fell out of his canoe while taking a pee. I do not believe he was drunk and fell out of his canoe and drowned.

  I do not even believe he was in his canoe when he died.

  Daphne Crombie is pivotal to any understanding of what happened. I believe her to be as true a witness as she could be, given the passage of time. She was, of course, passing on information she claimed was given to her by Annie Fraser, and this raises the obvious question as to whether or not Annie was telling the truth. I believe Daphne, and I believe the Trainors’ young Huntsville neighbour Brad McLellan in their respective claims that Winnie had written to Tom to say they had to get married and that the Trainors had asked that someone at Canoe Lake “teach Tom a lesson” for not living up to his commitment to Winnie. As a result of believing Daphne, I also have to believe Annie, since she would have derived no benefit whatsoever from confessing her husband’s assault of Thomson and the subsequent attempt to cover up the result—because she portrayed herself as being an accomplice after the fact.

  Daphne Crombie’s memory of Annie Fraser telling her that the letters were pushing for marriage is surely accurate, though we do not know for certain whether Winnie was pushing Tom merely to live up to his word or whether she was pushing him because, as Daphne Crombie believed, “a baby was coming.” All we have to consider is the mysterious winter of 1917–1918 that Winnie and her mother spent near Philadelphia. We know they stayed with “friends,” perhaps relatives, but do not know the names. We know there were rumours spreading at Canoe Lake and Huntsville that there was more involved than an unfortunate drowning, yet though the content of the gossip is known, the reality remains, at this time, beyond grasp.

  However, if there was indeed a pregnancy, then the rather hasty Trainor family move to Kearney in 1918 fits. An unwed mother bore a stigma in 1917 that is next to impossible to appreciate fully a century later. That Winnie’s mother was active in the local WCTU would have a bearing on the decision. That Winnie’s father appears never to have set foot again in Huntsville until he was ill and dying is also telling.

  Daphne said that Annie had told her that Shannon Fraser and Tom Thomson got into a fight. (She believed it was over money that Fraser owed Thomson.) Fraser, a big strong man, had struck Thomson a blow that knocked the painter down and into the fire, where his temple was punctured by a prong on the fire grate. Whether Thomson was barely alive or dead is not known, but Daphne accepted Annie’s word that she had helped her husband dispose of the “body.” She believed that Annie had helped pack the canoe, and perhaps had helped as well to attach a weight to Thomson’s leg, and that Shannon had towed the canoe out into the lake and dumped the body.

  Daphne was sure the fight had happened after the much-talked-about party at the guides’ place, the one at which William Little claimed Martin Blecher, Jr., had issued his warning to Thomson to stay out of his way if he knew what was good for him.

  If the fight happened after the Saturday night party, the Daphne Crombie-Annie Fraser version had problems. Mark Robinson claimed to have seen Fraser and Thomson walking on Sunday morning and said he had even overheard them talking by the Joe Lake dam about Tom wanting to play a trick on Robinson by catching a large trout elsewhere and then claiming it was the one from the dam area. Two others also claimed later to have seen Tom and Shannon together that morning. And, of course, Shan
non Fraser said he had seen Thomson paddle off from the Mowat Lodge dock at exactly 12:50 on Sunday afternoon. He knew, he said, because he had checked his timepiece and remembered perfectly.

  For a long time, I believed Fraser had made this up—being so utterly specific about the time—to cover for himself. But even if Fraser had concocted this “evidence,” it still left the problem of Mark Robinson’s sighting and the other possible sightings that Sunday morning. Robinson’s detailed description of the Sunday morning encounter first surfaced in a letter he wrote to Blodwen Davies in 1930, thirteen years after the event, and became even more descriptive in the long interview he did in 1953, when he was well into his eighties.

  Certain details differ from the accounts in his daily journals of 1917, which I take to be far more reliable than his remembrances in old age. The morning he later claimed to have seen Tom Thomson and Shannon Fraser is written up in his journal as a cold, rainy morning, during which he, his son Jack and the station master, Ed Thomas, took a rail car to Source Lake to check out some cut timber that lay near the siding. It’s possible, of course, that both incidents could have happened the same morning, but it’s at least equally possible that they did not. Robinson was a hugely admirable man and a greatly respected ranger, but even his own daughter later said she herself wondered if he had recalled that Sunday morning accurately.

  But even if he had not, what of the others? In an interview for the Algonquin Park archives in 1976, cousins Rose Thomas and Jack Wilkinson, who had lived in the park at the time of Thomson’s death, claimed to have seen Tom Thomson and Shannon Fraser walking together that same Sunday morning. They were, however, claiming to recall an incident from sixty years back that would not have been remarkable in its time—Thomson, after all, was not then missing—and from when Rose was ten years of age and Jack, five. The vividness of this memory, and an additional vivid memory of the undertaker Churchill digging through the night, which they could not possibly have witnessed, strongly suggests they were recalling televised dramatizations of those events that had been aired only a few years earlier by the CBC. I cannot regard these two young children to be reliable witnesses.