Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Weird Canada

He captured the fascination of his countrymen in life...and in death.

THE YOUNG PRODIGAL

Thomas Tom Thomson was an Ontario native who went on to become one of the most famous Canadian artists of the twentieth century. Born near Claremont, Ontario, in 1877, his family moved to Leith, close to Owen Sound, Ontario, on Georgian Bay. With his many siblings (the family would grow to ten children in all), he enjoyed a rusticated boyhood. Here his love for the natural world was born as he wandered through the surrounding woods, fished, and hunted. Here too his love for the arts blossomed: young Tom began to sketch and paint very early in his life, pastimes enhanced by his fondness for music (he played the mandolin and sang in a church choir) and poetry.

Thomson took an apprenticeship at a machine shop in 1899. This did not last long—a mere eight months—before he attempted to enlist to fight in the Second Boer War. Rejected on account of his flat feet, he found a job as a fire ranger in Algonquin Park in central Ontario before heading off to business school in the town of Chatham in 1901. Restless as ever, he dropped out less than a year later to follow his brother to Seattle. Here he worked at a photo-engraving firm and began to pursue painting with greater vigor. Three years later, he returned to Ontario.

WOODSMAN AND ARTIST

Thomson continued to support himself by working at several different photo-engraving companies, culminating in a position at Grip Limited in Toronto. At Grip, a prestigious design firm, he met a diverse group of up-and-coming artists. Many of these artists would come to be known as the “Group of Seven” (also known as the Algonquin School). After work hours they would meet at the Arts and Letters Club of Toronto for lengthy discussions about the nature of art, and on the weekends they would often decamp for the countryside around Toronto to paint in plein air.

After a brief stint at another design firm, Thomson had an artistic breakthrough with the painting A Northern Lake. The canvas won a prize of $250 at the 1913 Ontario Society of Artists exhibition. With his newfound success, Thomson was able to leave the commercial world and focus exclusively on his own work.

Callibogus is a Newfie drink consisting of spruce beer, molasses, and dark rum.

In 1914 the National Gallery of Canada acquired one of Thomson’s paintings. The three years that followed were his most prolific, when he generated such signature canvases as The Jack Pine, The West Wind, and The Northern River. Committed to showing the Canadian landscape in all its rugged beauty, Thomson’s art touched deep nationalistic sentiments and incorporated the “handmade” qualities of the Arts and Crafts movement.

James MacCullum, a well-known Toronto ophthalmologist, became Thomson’s patron during this time. MacCullum helped many developing artists by constructing the Studio Building in the Rosedale neighborhood in Toronto. He quickly secured a studio for Thomson. It became the artist’s custom to divide his time in the city with prolonged stays in his beloved north country, often to Algonquin Park. Here he honed his skills as a woodsman as well as an artist.

AN ENDURING INFLUENCE

On July 8, 1917, Thomson went out for a routine canoe trip on Canoe Lake in Algonquin Park. The canoe was seen floating upside down later that day; just over a week later, on July 16, his body was discovered. The cause of death was initially listed as “accidental drowning,” though several of his friends wondered how such an experienced outdoorsman exploring one of his most routine routes could have made such a tragic mistake. He was buried near Canoe Lake but reinterred in Leith at his brother’s request. In September 1917 Thomson’s friends, funded by MacCullum, erected a memorial cairn at Hayhurst Point on the lake, still standing today.

The mystery surrounding Thomson’s final hours has led to much speculation over the years. While most theories are simply conjecture, historians at the Great Unsolved Mysteries in Canadian History project have put forth some very plausible ideas: Was Thomson murdered by poachers, worried that a witness would report their illegal activity? Was he the victim of a freak logging accident, a rapidly expanding industry at the time that threatened to undo the very ideal of untamed wilderness he helped propagate? We may never know the truth, but one thing remains certain: Tom Thomson is still revered today as an almost mythic cultural figure in Canada, an artist who helped shape an entire nation’s self-perception.

A “Caribou” is a potent Quebec drink of one part red wine and six parts grain alcohol.