Northern Light

by Roy MacGregor

  The locals, the couple of hundred people who, in summer, either vacation in the dozens of cottages that line Canoe Lake or work in the camps, at the store or for the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources (previously known as Lands and Forests), take great pleasure in all this canoe traffic and are also greatly annoyed by it. There are stories told of foreign visitors sitting facing each other in canoes as they try to figure out how to make this strange vehicle move. They make their way down the lake, hugging the shoreline if it is windy; reach the Tom Thomson Memorial cairn; take their photographs beside it; and leave.

  On this lovely August day, Canoe Lake cottager Don Lloyd picks me up in his tin boat at the leaseholders’ dock on the shore opposite the Portage Store. Don is a retired high school geography teacher with more than sixty years of interior tripping to his credit. He is also author of Algonquin Harvest: The History of the McRae Lumber Company and the definitive Canoeing Algonquin Park. Duncan MacGregor, my father, worked for McRae’s for more than half a century, finally “retiring” at age seventy-three after a tractor-trailer hauling woodchips skidded on the ice, caught him under the swinging rear wheels and slammed him into the snowbank that finally stopped the sliding truck. The crash broke his pelvis, and we were told he would likely never walk again. But the doctors in Toronto, it seems, didn’t realize the powers of necessity. For the next fifteen years of his life, Duncan rarely missed a day at the Empire Hotel lounge, slowly hobbling down Main Street with his cane and even more slowly hobbling back.

  It had been cool and brisk earlier in the day, but the wind has died down considerably since the sun came out and the clouds cleared. Don heads us down the lake at full throttle, the wind pushing back his beloved red floppy hat and sending ashes from his cigarette dangerously down onto the grey sweater he is wearing. But nothing catches fire. He keeps to the far shore and as far as possible from the traffic jam of day canoeists and camp sailors. A fellow cottager, he says, had recently marked his hundredth rescue on Canoe Lake, plucking a couple of hapless trippers out of the lake before they’d even reached the first portage with their rented equipment. He shakes his head: having canoed this lake every summer since the end of the Second World War, when he first came to Taylor Statten Camps, he has long ago ceased to be surprised by the entirely predictable results of inexperience.

  We stop briefly along the northwestern shore, where, more than a century ago, the Gilmour mill and the village of Mowat stood. We push through the brush but can find only a few broken foundations and the odd fence post in the tangle. The bugs are still bad—so bad, in fact, that if all summers were equal to this one, cottages and summer camps might never have been invented. After swatting a few hundred mosquitoes and blackflies, we re-emerge and, grateful for the breeze along the open water, boat down to the cabin that once belonged to Winnie Trainor.

  I had not visited the old Trainor cottage in years. I had paddled by on the way to deeper trips into the interior but had not stopped or walked up onto the wraparound porch since the summer of 1963, when I’d helped my cousin open up the old summer home and clear out the mess. I can still recall the stale, musty smell that came at us as the solid plank-board door gave way. I remember a six-pack of old green Coca-Cola bottles was in the cabin, and somehow they had not exploded during the many winter freezes they had endured. I didn’t see the china set that Tom Thomson had supposedly painted for Winnie, or if I did see it, I had no interest in it then. I was fifteen years old, an age when anything not singularly about you simply does not exist.

  The old ranger cabin that Winnie’s father purchased back in 1912 has not changed much since that summer of 1963. The form remains the same, including the old boathouse with the ramp where a winch could haul up a boat for winter storage. But now there are flowerpots hanging from the porch rafters, with red mums in glorious bloom. And instead of boards baked black by the summer sun, the cottage is now painted a soft white-blue.

  The colour of a dove. Like the dove grey Tom Thomson had found by mixing his colours—including an expensive tube of cobalt blue—and then using it to paint his beloved Chestnut canoe, the one they found floating empty more than ninety years ago on these same waters.

  There was once a clear trail back of Winnie’s cottage that led to the little Canoe Lake cemetery on the hill. She used to walk the kilometre or more herself on summer days, some locals saying she would go to tidy up the grave where she knew, in her heart, her fiancé still lay. The real reason, however, was that she resented any suggestion that he might still be lying there, which would mean she had failed her lover in the last act she was to do for him.

  Don and I find the trail easily enough and, with a bit of secondary bug spraying, head back into the bush, glad for a couple of stretches of old boardwalk that carry us, dry, across the swampy sections. We come to the old road that ran to Mowat Lodge and trek through more swamp, then along a sandy isthmus with open water to the right and bush to the left, take a left fork in the road and finally come to a break in the bush to the right, with a rough trail heading up the hill to the cemetery.

  It is difficult going at times, the trail muddied from recent rain and the rocks slippery. In places the trail is blocked by recent windfall we have to work around, or over, or even under; in other places raspberry canes slow our progress by catching our clothes with barbs or catching our eyes with ripe, red berries.

  Finally, we come to the ridge of the hill and can see the birch tree that marks the cemetery. This birch is unlike any you have ever seen. The rule of thumb in the landscaping world is that birches last about thirty years before they begin falling apart. This birch, however, now thick as an oak, was here in 1917 when they buried Tom Thomson in the shade of its midsummer leaves, and it stands in the cemetery still, its branches grown into giant “arms” that seem cocked and ready to defend the ground.

  The massive birch, now more than a century old, is inside a picket fence that has been kept in slight repair over the years. The fence surrounds the two earlier graves, one small stone marking the resting place of eight-year-old Alexander Hayhurst.

  Tom Thomson was not buried within the confines of the fence back in 1917. The unmarked grave, which was intended to be temporary, was dug about ten to fifteen good paces to the north, and it was here, in 1956, that William Little and his curious band of gravediggers found an old casket containing the skeletal remains that were later determined by provincial authorities to be that of an unknown Aboriginal.

  There is another unmarked grave off to the side. It holds Hugh Statten’s beloved Labrador-mix, Zack, who was killed Easter weekend of 2008 when Hugh and his family went cross-country skiing on the lake. Zack, a great roamer, somehow ended up wandering into a wolf pack that attacked and tore him to pieces. It is understandable why Statten would choose to bury his dog here, as each year on the anniversary of Thomson’s death he is host to “Tom Thomson Night” on Little Wapomeo Island. That evening, staff from the nearby Portage Store visit the painter’s grave at midnight before returning to a celebration in his memory at the original Taylor Statten cabin, which Hugh now owns.

  Just to the north of the fenced cemetery sits a small, white, wooden cross. On this late summer day, no wildflowers are placed near it, but there is a small candle, burned out, and two pennies that have been placed on top of the cross. One is a 1967 Canadian Centennial penny; the other is new and still shiny. Locals believe the cross was left behind by the film crew that came to Canoe Lake for the CBC’s documentary, The Mystery of Tom Thomson, back in the late sixties.

  The small, white cross is a fiction—a prop set placed in a clearing beside the little cemetery for dramatic purposes. The place where Tom Thomson lies today, in the very grave he was buried in back in 1917 and where his bones were re-buried sometime after 1956, is farther north of the spot where visitors believe he was once buried.

  There is no marking at all where he truly lies. He is somewhere in the tangle of raspberry canes, dead spruce, rotting leaves and pine needles, somewhere beneath t
he saplings fighting for light and the lovely yellow wildflowers that grow all along the trail up to his grave and have found the space and determination to bloom amid the choke and tumble of the fallen trees and branches that make penetration of the actual gravesite all but impossible.

  The yellow flowers are called jewelweed in botany books. Impatiens capensis. But in Algonquin Park, they have always gone by their more familiar name.

  Touch-me-nots.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  It is hard to know where to begin when the debts go back nearly half a century—more, in fact, if I were simply to thank my parents, Duncan MacGregor and Helen McCormick MacGregor, for the privilege of being born into an Algonquin Park family with connections to Tom Thomson and Winnifred Trainor.

  So many of those interviewed over the years have now passed on: Daphne Crombie of Toronto; Addie Sylvester, Winnie’s lifelong neighbour in Huntsville; Brad McLellan, another neighbour; Dr. Wilfred T. Pocock, Winnie’s doctor and great friend; Huntsville historian Joe Cookson; Trapper Ralph Bice of Kearney. So many with roots in the Canoe Lake area are also gone: Jimmy and Wam Stringer, Moon Stringer, Aubrey Dunn, Joe River, Jean McEown, Leonard “Gibby” Gibson and author Ottelyn Addison, daughter of Algonquin Park ranger Mark Robinson.

  I owe a huge debt to Ron Tozer, retired Algonquin Park naturalist and archivist supreme, who never tired of my queries and was always eager and helpful, as was Kevin Chute of the Algonquin Park Archives. I am also grateful to my friend and fellow Lake of Two Rivers’ child Rory MacKay and to Ron Pittaway, for work they did in past years collecting the oral memoirs of Algonquin Park oldtimers, all now since departed. I am equally indebted to the Statten family of Canoe Lake, who have always been kind and helpful and who gave me access to material, much of it new, that would prove to be of great significance to this story. I thank Dr. Taylor Statten and Hugh Statten, in particular, for their insights and help. As well, I owe the Huntsville Forester, especially the late Peter Rice, for giving me complete access to the fragile Forester files in the years before they could be saved electronically.

  Several longtime Huntsville residents were helpful with memories of Winnie Trainor in her later years. They include Bob Hutcheson, Ed Terziano, Norm Avery and Winnie’s longtime neighbour Eve Beatty. I thank Mern Parker, as well, the greatest grade 3, 4 and 5 teacher of all time.

  I could not have completed this book without access to enormous research done by others. I found the website Death on a Painted Lake (http://www.canadianmysteries.ca/sites/thomson/home/

  indexen.html) to be of great help as a quick reference, and I thank Dr. Gregory Klages and his colleagues for the work they have done in this wonderful project. I am grateful to the National Library and Archives, particularly to my friend Jim Burant, for checking out photographs and files and for assistance searching in the Ontario Public Archives. Ottelyn Addison’s sons, Ed and Bill, were kind to give me complete cooperation regarding the precious journals of Mark Robinson, their grandfather. Barbara Hall of Winnipeg provided access to the research and notes compiled on Tom Thomson’s death by her late husband, Dr. Philip Hall. Tom Thomson expert and art curator Joan Murray was always helpful whenever I had questions, as was artist and weather expert Phil Chadwick.

  Researcher Iris Nowell granted me full access to her personal files on the Thomson family, gathered back in the early 1970s for McClelland & Stewart’s art book Tom Thomson: The Silence and the Storm. Interviews she did with Thomson family members no longer alive were invaluable.

  I cannot express how much appreciation I have for Tracy Thomson in all of this. The painter’s great-grandniece, herself an accomplished artist, was helpful throughout, and continually kept an open mind on matters that she fully realized might upset some of her family and could, in the end, disprove the family contention that Tom Thomson lies buried in the family plot at Leith. I like to think her great-great uncle would be proud of her.

  I thank Park historians H. Eleanor (Mooney) Wright, Don Beauprie and Don Lloyd for their interest in the project. Don also was a most courteous host for visits to Canoe Lake as were longtime cottagers Bob and Mary Crook. Bob Crook and Jim Hickman, Ottawa dentists, were crucial at the beginning of the forensic investigation into the skull unearthed at Canoe Lake in 1956. I am grateful to Bob, as well, for his work in scouting out locations for various Tom Thomson sketches of the area and for insight into the Blecher family, who once lived where Bob and Mary now have their summer home on Canoe Lake.

  I am also grateful to another area historian, Doug Mackey, who helped me track down the tale of the Wattie family and their quiet possession of Tom Thomson’s camping equipment for 80 years. I thank Ken Lyons, telephone historian, for his invaluable information on how telephone billing worked in 1917. I thank the Toronto Star, the Ottawa Citizen and the Globe and Mail for access to their libraries and archives and also my brother Tom MacGregor for help he provided at Legion Magazine.

  Help with photographs and illustrations came from a variety of sources. I thank those at the National Gallery of Canada, the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Tom Thomson Art Gallery in Owen Sound, the McMichael Canadian Art Collection in Kleinburg, Ont., and the Algonquin Park Archives for help in tracking down various illustrations. Thanks to my friend Jack Hurley, ace canoe builder of Dwight, Ontario, for the photograph of Jimmy and Wam Stringer. Thank you to Ellen MacGregor for the map of Canoe Lake, circa 1917, as well as great many other matters—not the least of which was indulgence.

  Nancy Lang and Rebecca Middleton, two researchers working on The West Wind, an upcoming documentary by Peter Raymont’s White Pine Pictures based in part on this book, were helpful and encouraging over the past year.

  Patrick Boyer, author of A Passion for Justice, the definitive biography on Justice James McRuer, and Marion Howe of the McRuer family were helpful in my efforts to track down the identity of the woman falsely identified all these years as Winnie Trainor. The investigation continues. I am grateful to genealogist Les Bowser for advice and help in investigating the Tom Thomson portrait of “Laura.”

  I thank Neil J. Lehto, a Michigan lawyer who became fascinated with the Tom Thomson mystery and who wrote Algonquin Elegy: Tom Thomson’s Last Spring after spending years studying the story. Neil and I began exchanging emails when he was writing his book, and we continued throughout the research and writing of mine. He used his legal training and his natural skepticism to challenge me at every turn. His was a tough, fair court and I appreciate every discussion we had concerning our mutual passion. We both believed, at all times, that truth mattered far more than personal preference.

  The conclusions of this book would not have been possible without the work and scientific expertise of Dr. Ronald F. Williamson, adjunct professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Toronto and founder of Archaeological Services, Inc. Dr. Williamson involved archaeologist Dr. Andrew Riddle and biological anthropologist Alexis Hutcheson, both with Archaeological Services. He also arranged for Dr. Susan Pfeiffer, former Dean of Graduate Studies at the University of Toronto, to bring her expertise in Aboriginal archaeology to the project.

  Special mention must be made of Victoria Lywood, the internationally respected forensic artist from John Abbot College in Montreal, for her professional contributions. Her work was pivotal, important and hugely appreciated.

  All along the writing of this book, I was challenged by Edie Van Alstine, an Ottawa editor who shares an Algonquin Park and Huntsville background. She was invaluable in every aspect, from facts to grammar to the book’s structure and re-structure. I am forever indebted. It was also Edie’s family connections—Marion St. Michael of Toronto and Helen and Doug Gurr of Guelph—that gave access to the deck of playing cards calling 1916 “Best summer ever was known.” Thanks, as well, to Ottawa artists and photographers Michael Zavacky and Darren Holmes for their exceptional work in creatively photographing the antique cards and giving them new life. Anne Collins, publisher of Random House Canada, believed that the time was ri
ght for this book and supported the project from the beginning. Senior Random House editor Angelika Glover and editor Kathryn Dean were demanding but always professional. I also thank my agents, Natasha Daneman and Bruce Westwood, for their patience, their good humour, their faith and their friendship.

  I have written far too many books and worked far too long in journalism not to be acutely aware that mistakes happen. This book recounts a virtual litany of errors and misconceptions that are as much a part of the Tom Thomson story as the artist’s mysterious death and his remarkable legacy of art. I accept that not all can be known about this nearly century-old mystery and that mistakes will continue to be made, some in this book. All I can say is that I have tried to be faithful to the facts and respectful of the circumstantial and the speculative. I accept full responsibility for the claims herein and happily embrace Tracy Thomson’s belief that if we ever reach the absolute truth in this story “that’s the end of the intrigue and the chatter about it.”

  We never wish for that…

  SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

  This is far from a complete record of the various books, periodicals, newspaper accounts and archival interviews and material consulted over the years. It is, instead, a general list of publications I found particularly useful and one that readers interested in Algonquin Park and Tom Thomson’s story and art might find of further interest.

  Addison, Ottelyn, and Elizabeth Harwood. Tom Thomson: The Algonquin Years. Toronto: Ryerson Press, 1969.

  ——. Early Days in Algonquin Park. Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1974.