Northern Light

by Roy MacGregor

  Most intriguing in all this speculation is that Thomson had earlier written to his brother-in-law Tom Harkness that sometime in July or August he planned to head west to paint the Rockies. It may be that when he died, Thomson was in the process of putting that plan together.

  Thomson had long been friends with ranger Tom Wattie, who lived in South River and kept a cabin on Camp Island in Round Lake (now called Kawawaymog) and manned the ranger station on North Tea Lake, just inside Algonquin Park’s western boundary. (Today, there’s a cairn to the memory of Wattie where L’Amable du Fond River dumps into North Tea.) Thomson liked to purchase his sketching panels in South River and, over several trips, he and Wattie had struck up a close relationship. In her September 17, 1917, letter to George Thomson, Winnie Trainor said that two years earlier Tom had purchased a new canoe and a silk tent while journeying through South River. While in South River, he would often stay at the hotel and visit the Wattie farm on the river, but he also sometimes stayed over at the Wattie island cabin. Some believe he sketched The West Wind at Round Lake in 1916 before turning it into a major canvas over the winter of 1916–17.

  Ken Cooper, now seventy-seven, is the son of Amelia Christina Wattie, known as “Tootsie” to the family, and the grandson of Tom Wattie. Tootsie was seventeen the summer Thomson died and, apparently, a great favourite of the painter. According to Cooper, Thomson gave his mother four paintings, three of which now hang in major Canadian galleries. One was lost to a thief who simply walked into the unlocked Wattie cabin on Round Lake and took it from the wall while the artist was still alive. “Tom Thomson told her after that that she’d better keep them safe somewhere,” says Cooper.

  The Wattie family has its own lore about Thomson. They joked about how he had, over time, become revered as an expert outdoorsman. “He was not an expert canoeist,” says Cooper. “He hadn’t even seen a canoe until he got to the park.” But Thomson was game and generous, and the ranger Wattie took him under his wing, even at one point lending Thomson his Winchester .30-.30 so the painter could guide some hunters along the park’s northwestern boundary. The family always believed that Thomson had drowned after becoming tangled up in his fishing line. In all his visits, they never heard him mention Winnifred Trainor or any intention to get married and settle down in the summer of 1917.

  In fact, they perhaps had proof that he had no such plans at all—proof that lay in storage in the old Wattie home through most of the rest of the twentieth century with no one but immediate family and close friends being aware that it even existed.

  Eight decades after Thomson’s death in 1917, Cooper persuaded his uncle (Tom Wattie’s son Gord), then into his nineties, that the family should donate their Tom Thomson belongings to the Algonquin Park archives. Some in the family were reluctant to part with the material, but eventually Gord Wattie agreed, and the family handed over their Tom Thomson treasures.

  Ron Tozer of Algonquin Park received the Wattie material. His handwritten notes from August 19, 1998, list the items:

  1. Tent: said to belong to Tom Thomson

  2. Sleeping bag: said to belong to Tom Thomson

  3. Waterproof pants: said to belong to Tom Thomson

  4. Sleeping cot: unused, but intended to be used on 1917 trip by Tom Thomson to Temagami (which never happened due to Thomson’s death).

  There were several other items as well, all associated with camping. When Tozer examined them, he found that someone had written “1915” in ink at the bottom of the sleeping bag and, at the top, “Tom Tompson 1915.” On the outside of the bag, “Wattie” is written twice. Tozer does not believe that Thomson would have misspelled his own name, but it remains possible that someone in the Wattie family, perhaps Tom Wattie himself, wrote on the bag so that future generations would know what it was. Certainly family lore all the way back to 1917 held that these items had been the painter’s. “No one else knew about it,” Cooper told me in 2009.

  The only written reference to the camping gear had been in a local column published in 2002 by area historian Doug Mackey. The information had not been available to any of the many previous biographers of Thomson. Gord Wattie, who died in 2001, provided notes claiming that the equipment had been forwarded by Thomson to the family in anticipation of a canoe and fishing trip that the two Toms, Thomson and Wattie, had been planning to take to Temagami in northern Ontario later that summer. The equipment had arrived just before Thomson’s death.

  It seems highly unusual that someone would ship his camping gear—the very definition of travelling light—ahead when it would have been a simple matter to bring it along by train or by canoe and portage from Canoe Lake. But Thomson might have been thinking of slipping away unnoticed from Canoe Lake, catching a train at the last minute and picking up his camping gear at South River. It may also be that, after his fishing trip with his ranger friend Tom Wattie, he planned to keep on going, following the plan he’d mentioned to Tom Harkness when he said that, sometime in July or August, he planned to head west and paint in the Rockies.

  No one in the Thomson family had ever been made aware of this cache of equipment that was claimed to have belonged to Tom. The information was a shock. The easy assumption that he may have been planning a getaway, whether skipping out on a promise of marriage or an unwanted child, would paint him “as a bit of a cad,” says Tracy Thomson, “and if so, I and others would be terribly disappointed.” Still, this is a possibility, given his own stated intentions of heading west to paint and the Wattie family’s absolute conviction that the gear shipped to them had belonged to Thomson.

  It could be that someone at Canoe Lake learned of the pre-shipped camping gear, made various assumptions and decided that Thomson needed to be “taught a lesson.” You do not skip out on a marriage. You live up to your promises, especially to a woman who so very clearly believed they would be fulfilled, who may also have been in desperate need to have that promise kept.

  It might have been a lesson that went terribly wrong.

  There is, of course, one enormous problem with Daphne Crombie’s story. I have no doubt that she recounted, twice, an honest rendering of her exchanges about Tom and Winnie with Annie Fraser. If we accept that Annie told Daphne the truth—and Annie not only was held to be a reputable, dependable woman, but in this case was also incriminating herself—and that Daphne fairly reported what she had heard, then it is obvious that Shannon Fraser was a prime suspect in the murder of Tom Thomson.

  The problem lies in the timeline. From her interviews, it seems that Daphne Crombie believed the fight between Fraser and Thomson occurred after the Saturday, July 7th evening drinking party at the guides’ cabin. But if so, how can the events of July 8, 1917, be explained?

  Tom Thomson—who, according to the interpretation that follows from Crombie’s account, would have been tangled in fishing line at the bottom of Canoe Lake by Sunday morning—was seen by witnesses that morning. As mentioned previously, Mark Robinson claimed some years afterward that he had seen Tom with Shannon Fraser by the Joe Lake dam as they plotted to pull a practical joke on Mark with a large trout Tom would catch elsewhere. Two others stepped forward nearly sixty years after the painter’s death to say that they, too, had seen Thomson that Sunday morning. Their claims were made during an Algonquin Park archives interview conducted by Rory MacKay on February 11, 1976. The two were Rose Thomas and her cousin Jack Wilkinson, whose families lived at various places about the park—Cache Lake and Canoe Lake among them. The summer Thomson died, they had been living at Canoe Lake. Rose Thomas was ten and Wilkinson, five.

  In response to MacKay prodding them about their memories, they produced a variety of childlike remembrances—both believed there had been a train wreck a day in the time they were at Canoe Lake—and a tremendous amount of confusion concerning events, places and people, particularly the recollection of names. And yet, surprisingly, when MacKay turned the questioning to the week Tom Thomson went missing, their memories suddenly became crystal clear.

  “
In the morning it was very muggy,” Rose Thomas said, “and a fine, warm drizzle rain.” Wilkinson remembered seeing Thomson when both children were with Rose’s mother. “He came up with Shannon Fraser in the morning before he got drowned in the afternoon,” said Wilkinson. “He came up, didn’t he walk up and walk to the section house?”

  Rose Thomas corrected him, saying they hadn’t spoken to the artist, but that “him and Mr. Fraser walked up the track.”

  It seemed odd that the two would remember such detail—right down to the “drizzle” in the morning—of a day many years in the past that at the time would have been remarkable for nothing. Thomson, after all, hadn’t even gone missing at this time. And yet they remembered everything from Tom and Shannon walking together to the weather. And then it struck me. Possibly what the two were remembering was the CBC documentary on Thomson that had been aired only a few years earlier and perhaps remembering, as well, what they had read in William Little’s book, which was still popular. As the conversation with MacKay continued, the two argued about places and locations and events but then again later, when the topic returned to the exhumation of Thomson’s body from the Canoe Lake graveyard, their memories were identical and vivid, right down to a description of the undertaker working in the light of a single lantern deep into the night—exactly as the scene had been portrayed in the CBC television documentary.

  Daphne Crombie told me in 1977 that she didn’t believe Mark Robinson saw Thomson that morning. She might have been right. Robinson’s story about the binoculars, the eavesdropping and the big trout is hard to square. Memories dating from when Rose was ten and Jack was five are even easier to dismiss.

  But still, for the sake of argument, let’s assume that Tom Thomson was out and about that drizzly Sunday morning.

  July 8, 1917, has always been accepted as the day Tom Thomson died, by whatever means. It was a dull, wet Sunday, and three witnesses—regardless of what we make of their stories—claim to have seen Tom and Shannon Fraser walking up around the Joe Lake dam. After they returned to Mowat Lodge, Fraser said that he provided the artist with some supplies and watched him paddle away from the Mowat Lodge dock—the last time, it was assumed, that anyone ever saw Tom Thomson alive. Shannon Fraser testified that he had even checked his timepiece and saw that Thomson had left the dock at 12:50 p.m.

  This has always struck me as most peculiar. Why would anyone check his watch at such a moment and, even if Fraser did, why would he make such a careful mental note of the time? Exact times are rarely noted in such settings. Was Shannon Fraser wondering if he was too late for lunch at his own lodge? Or was he, in retrospect, building a case for Tom Thomson disappearing that afternoon as opposed to his vanishing in the predawn hours of the day?

  The next bit of “evidence” relating to the time of Thomson’s death has been the reported sighting of an upturned canoe by Martin Blecher, Jr., and his sister Bessie as they rode their little “putt-putt” motorboat down toward Tea Lake—ostensibly in the same direction that Thomson had taken from Mowat Lodge.

  The canoe has always been yet another enigma within the mystery. The Blechers also apparently noted the exact time of their sighting of the canoe—3:05 p.m.—and said they did not investigate. As mentioned earlier, this goes against all convention for a place like Canoe Lake, where an upturned canoe is considered the wilderness equivalent of a city fire alarm. Blecher’s explanation for not investigating was that he and his sister presumed the canoe was one that the Colsons, owners of the Algonquin Hotel on Joe Lake, had reported missing. Martin and Bessie Blecher determined to catch the canoe later and return it to its rightful owners.

  This, if anything, seems more plausible. Had the upturned—no one has ever said “swamped,” which would look different—canoe been Thomson’s, they would instantly have identified it as his, since Thomson’s dove-grey canoe with the metal strip on the keel would be as recognizable among the Canoe Lake regulars as the Royal Carriage might be in London. The Blechers—who knew Thomson well and who lived only one cabin beyond the Trainor cabin and dock, where Thomson’s canoe was regularly pulled up and turned over—never said it was Tom’s canoe. In fact, they specifically said that they took it to be the Colsons’ missing canoe, and this perhaps highly significant detail seems somehow to have been overlooked or dismissed in all the retellings of the Thomson legend. In Little’s book, for example, the Blechers’ decision not to investigate is portrayed as a negligent act and as one more dramatic piece of evidence in the case Little was building against Martin Blecher, Jr. Surely if Blecher had been the murderer, the last thing he and his sister would do would be to motor past Thomson’s overturned canoe—or, for that matter, later report that they had seen it and done nothing.

  It is far more likely that the canoe they spied was not Thomson’s. And rather significantly, later in the week, during the search for Thomson, Robinson made note in his daily journals that he and his son Jack had found the Colson canoe on the Gill Lake portage.

  The confusion regarding canoes does not end here. Thomson’s dove-grey canoe was said by one of the guides to have been found later the following day (Monday), drifting upright. It was also said by Mark Robinson to have been found upside down. It was even said, by one of the tourists there at the time, who later wrote about the incident, to have been discovered stashed in the Blecher boathouse. There is simply no firm and accepted version of exactly where or how the canoe was found or in what position, though it is certain that the distinctive canoe was indeed located on Monday, July 9th, with Thomson nowhere near it. It was not, however, until the following morning, Tuesday, July 10th, that this was reported to Mark Robinson at his quarters on nearby Joe Lake. Shannon Fraser brought the news, as Robinson reported it in his journal, “that Martin Bleacher had found Tom Thompsons Canoe floating upside down in Canoe Lake and wanted us to drag for Mr Thompsons body.”

  Given the ambiguity of Robinson’s note in his journal, it could have been either Martin or Shannon wanting park authorities to drag for Thomson’s body. If Blecher was indeed the murderer, as partially believed by Robinson later and fully believed by author William Little, why would he send the authorities in search of evidence? The ambiguity remains.

  No wonder, following the brief coroner’s inquest held at the Blecher cottage, Mark wrote in his journal, “There is Considerable Adverse Comment regarding the taking of the Evidence among the Residents.” Annie Fraser, for example, was not even at the inquest carried out by Dr. Ranney of North Bay. Only two women, Bessie Blecher and her mother, were there, and they were present only because the inquest happened to be held in their place and they prepared the meal that seems to have taken precedence over all else. If Annie had been there, she might have been able to corroborate her husband’s claim that he’d seen Thomson leave the Mowat Lodge dock at exactly 12:50 p.m. on Sunday, July 8th. If, in fact, that statement was true.

  No one has ever questioned this most specific reference to time. To Mark Robinson, it seemed to fit with his sense that Thomson had paddled away from Mowat Lodge at around one o’clock, stopped over at the empty Trainor cabin to gather whatever else he needed for his brief trip and then paddled away for the very last time.

  But what if Thomson had proceeded straight down Canoe Lake and over the portage to Gill Lake or through the narrows into Bonita Lake and on through the next narrows into Tea Lake? He had all afternoon and early evening to fish. He would have trolled, not fished at the dam, as widely presumed, as he was after a lake trout and the trout, in July, were in the deeper water. He could have covered both Gill Lake and Tea Lake that afternoon and into the long light of the early July evening, as both bodies of water are small and easily accessible. He could even have taken the time to stop and prepare a meal, perhaps even using the supplies that Fraser claimed to have given him. Maybe he had a small trout or bass to fillet and cook as well. That he seems not to have taken his axe with him from Mowat Lodge is unusual, but its absence does not make a fire impossible. He would have had to have
an axe if he was going on a longer trek, but not necessarily for a shore lunch. Instead of splitting logs, guides and expert woodsmen knew to collect dead branches from under the spruce and tamarack that line the shores and portages of the area. All Thomson would have needed was a match to start a fire that would burn quickly, providing ready cooking heat, and that could be easily put out.

  Perhaps Tom did catch the trout Mark Robinson maintained he was looking for, perhaps not, but he might have fished into the evening—considered the best time for trout by park oldtimers—paddling back to Mowat Lodge under cover of dark. He would not have been “sneaking” back but merely travelling in a way and at a time that was common at Canoe Lake. As Mark Robinson’s journals of these days continually make reference to rain and wet, it is safe to assume that there was cloud cover and that it was darker earlier than might have been the case under a clear evening sky. The silence of a well-paddled canoe would have allowed him to pass by unnoticed, even in the middle of the day, unless someone was specifically looking for him. Let us assume, then, that it was dark when Tom came back on Sunday, July 8, 1917, and that no one noticed his return. As it was a weekend, perhaps Mr. and Mrs. Trainor were now at their cabin—no mention one way or the other exists in Robinson’s journals—so Tom would have gone to the lodge, which was mostly empty. The weather, the blackflies and the mosquitoes that week were making a stay at the lodge uninviting. Tom could easily have gone to his room unnoticed. And perhaps it was only then that he opened and read the letter from Winnie that Annie Fraser later told Daphne Crombie about. “Please, Tom, you must get a new suit because we’ll have to be married.”

  Perhaps Tom thought about it a while and decided he had to go through with it. So he would then have gone to see Shannon Fraser to try to get back the money still owed on the canoes Fraser had bought for the lodge, using Thomson’s generous loan.