Northern Light Read online

  ALSO BY ROY MACGREGOR

  NONFICTION

  Canadians: A Portrait of a Country and Its People

  The Dog and I: Confessions of a Best Friend

  The Weekender: A Cottage Journal

  Escape: In Search of the Natural Soul of Canada

  A Loonie for Luck

  A Life in the Bush

  The Road Home: Images of the Ottawa Valley

  The Home Team: Fathers, Sons & Hockey

  The Seven A.M. Practice: Stories of Family Life

  Quantity Time: Words of Comfort for Imperfect Parents

  Road Games: A Year in the Life of the NHL

  Chief: The Fearless Vision of Billy Diamond

  Home Game: Hockey and Life in Canada (with Ken Dryden)

  Forever: The Annual Hockey Classic

  FICTION

  Canoe Lake

  The Last Season

  The Screech Owls Series (for young readers)

  Copyright © 2010 Roy MacGregor

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Published in 2010 by Random House Canada, a division of Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Distributed in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited.

  www.randomhouse.ca

  Random House Canada and colophon are registered trademarks.

  Photograph of cards Copyright © Darren Holmes

  Canoe Lake map Copyright © E. Griffith

  Algonquin Park map: Andrew Roberts

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  MacGregor, Roy, 1948

  Northern light : the enduring mystery of Tom Thomson and the woman who loved him / Roy MacGregor.

  Also available in electronic format.

  eISBN: 978-0-307-37604-6

  1. Thomson, Tom, 1877–1917. 2. Trainor, Winnie. 3. Painters—Canada—Biography. I. Title.

  ND249.T5M34 2010 759.11 C2010-901857-5

  v3.1

  For Winnie

  ALGONQUIN PARK AND SURROUNDING AREA

  CANOE LAKE 1917

  SUMMER OF 1916,

  BEST SUMMER EVER WAS KNOWN

  AUGUST 2ND,

  TOM THOMPSON

  TORONTO

  Side 2 (not shown): TOM THOMPSON

  CARL GODDIN*

  CHARLOTTE ROCHE*

  ALICE GREEN

  FIVE HUNDRED PLAYERS

  Inscribed Congress Playing Cards, Courtesy of Douglas (great nephew of Alice Green) and Helen Gurr.

  (Note: Handwritten by Alice Green; the misspelling of Thomson’s name was constant by park rangers, residents, and friends.)

  *Author seeks more information about Charlotte Roche and Carl Goddin.

  KEY PERSONALITIES AND PLACES

  Tom Thomson: August 5, 1877—July 8, 1917, Canada’s best-known artist, who died mysteriously at Canoe Lake, Algonquin Park, in the summer of 1917 at age thirty-nine.

  Winnifred Trainor: March 18, 1885—August 12, 1962, resident of Huntsville, Ontario, and Canoe Lake cottager, believed to be engaged to Tom Thomson at the time of his death. She never married.

  The Thomson Family: John and Margaret Thomson of Claremont, Ontario, just north and slightly east of Toronto, and Rose Hill farm at Leith, Ontario, on Georgian Bay, and later of Owen Sound, Ontario, had ten children: George (1868), Elizabeth (1869), Henry (1870), Louise (1873), Minnie (1875), Tom (1877), Ralph (1880), James (1882), Margaret (1884) and Fraser (1886). Tom was born in Claremont. When he was two years old, the family moved to Rose Hill farm outside of Leith. The family plot is in Leith, including one grave that is said to contain the remains of Tom Thomson. Tom’s eldest sister, Elizabeth, married Tom Harkness, who would act as executor of the Tom Thomson estate. In 1967, the Harknesses’ daughter, Jessie Fisk, came across forty negatives from photographs Tom had taken on his first trip into the North Country in 1912. The photos included, eerily, the Canoe Lake cemetery, where he would be buried five years later. Mrs. Fisk and two of Thomson’s sisters, Mrs. Louise Henry and Mrs. Margaret Tweedale, would provide much information in later years on the relationship, from their perspectives, between Tom Thomson and Winnifred Trainor.

  George Thomson: Tom’s older brother, also an artist. Highly successful in business and ambitious in art, George was the responsible one the family turned to in times of difficulty. He would play a key role in what became of his younger brother’s final paintings.

  The Trainor Family: Hugh Trainor and Margaret Jane Bradley had two daughters, Winnie and Marie, and lived in Huntsville, Ontario, up to the time of Tom Thomson’s death, then moved north to Kearney, Ontario. They returned to live in Huntsville around the time of Hugh Trainor’s death in 1932. Marie married a medical doctor, Roy McCormick, brother of my grandfather, Algonquin Park chief ranger Tom McCormick, and they lived in Endicott, New York. They had four children, one of whom, Terence Trainor McCormick, inherited Winnifred Trainor’s estate, which included several Tom Thomson originals.

  Mark Robinson: Algonquin Park ranger, stationed at Joe Lake and Canoe Lake during much of the time Tom Thomson was there, and chief ranger in the years before Tom McCormick. Robinson’s carefully written journals are considered the most factual evidence available for what happened during the summer of 1917. His daughter, Ottelyn Addison, later wrote a short biography of Thomson.

  Painter Friends: While working in Toronto in commercial design prior to the outbreak of the First World War, Thomson made many artistic friends, including J.E.H. MacDonald, Frederick Varley, Arthur Lismer, Franklin Carmichael, A.Y. Jackson and Lawren Harris. In 1919, two years after Thomson’s death, these six, along with Franz (Frank) Johnston, formed the Group of Seven, the most influential art movement in Canadian history. They credited Thomson and his passion for painting in the wild with being a great inspiration to them. Other members—A.J. Casson, Edwin Holgate and L.L. Fitzgerald—joined over the years. The group disbanded in the early thirties.

  Dr. James MacCallum: Wealthy Toronto ophthalmologist and art investor who served as a patron to Thomson throughout the painter’s life. He acted on behalf of the estate in selling Thomson’s works following the artist’s death. MacCallum was friendly with all the artists in Thomson’s circle, and his cottage on Go Home Bay in Georgian Bay was a frequent visiting and painting destination. Along with Lawren Harris—also wealthy, but through family holdings—MacCallum built the Studio Building beside Toronto’s Rosedale Ravine, where several of the artists, including Thomson, completed their larger canvases.

  Huntsville: A small town at the north end of the cottage-country District of Muskoka in Central Ontario. Founded by Captain George Hunt, who insisted on a temperance clause in his deeds, it largely grew into the surrounding hills, where no such clauses were demanded. Originally a timber town, it evolved into a major summer tourist destination after World War II.

  Kearney: A small village on the western edge of Algonquin Park, north of Huntsville along the Grand Trunk Railway line that ran from near Ottawa through Algonquin Park to Georgian Bay near Parry Sound. The year following Thomson’s death, Winnie Trainor went to work at the Shortreed Lumber Company at Kearney and stayed there with her aging parents until the early 1930s.

  Scotia Junction: A small community twenty-five kilometres north of Huntsville and west of Kearney where the rail line going north from Toronto to North Bay intersected with the rail line coming out of Algonquin Park. Passengers bound for Canoe Lake from Huntsville or other points south had to change trains here.

  Algonquin Provincial Park: Canada’s first provincial park, f
ounded in 1893 in the Ontario highlands. Some three hours north of Toronto by car, it has now expanded to cover an area of 7,700 square kilometres. The park is internationally renowned for its beauty and canoe routes.

  Canoe Lake: Algonquin Park’s best-known attraction, because of Tom Thomson. The relatively small lake, approximately three kilometres long and somewhat more than one kilometre wide, was a stop along what became the Grand Trunk Railway line through the park, and once, during the height of the timber trade, it held a village, Mowat, of some five hundred people. In the early twentieth century it increasingly became a recreational lake, with leaseholder cottages (including the Trainors’), Mowat Lodge (where Tom Thomson often stayed) and the internationally famous Taylor Statten Camps, Ahmek for boys and Wapomeo for girls.

  The Stringers: A well-known family residing on Potter Creek, at the north end of Canoe Lake. Two of “Pappy” and “Mammy” Stringers’ dozen children, Jimmy and Wam, lived year round on the lake.

  The Blechers: A German-American family from Buffalo, New York, who summered at Canoe Lake. They had a two-storey cottage located two cabins down from the Trainors’. Martin Blecher, Sr., and his wife, Louisa, had two children known to Canoe Lake residents and cottagers: Martin Blecher, Jr., who claimed to be a private detective, and Bessie. A second daughter, Louise, is listed in the 1920 U.S. Census as having been born in 1892, though her existence seems to have been unknown at Canoe Lake. Martin Blecher, Jr., and Tom Thomson often quarrelled over the progress of the war.

  The Frasers: Shannon and Annie Fraser ran Mowat Lodge, where Thomson often stayed, as well as the post office and telegraph office. Shannon had a team of horses and cart that met the trains. Thomson lent Shannon Fraser money in 1915 so he could purchase canoes for the lodge.

  The Stattens: Taylor Statten came to Canoe Lake at about the same time as Tom Thomson, and they became friends. Thomson even helped construct the fireplace in Statten’s log cabin on Little Wapomeo Island. Statten and his wife, Ethel—who often went by the Native names “Gitchiahmek” and “Tonakela,”—founded Camp Ahmek for boys and Camp Wapomeo for girls on Canoe Lake. The family continues to run Taylor Statten Camps.

  The Colsons: J. Edwin Colson and his wife, Molly, a nurse, ran the Algonquin Hotel on Joe Lake, a small body of water directly north of Canoe Lake. Edwin’s sister, Annie Colson, ran a small outfitting store beside the Joe Lake station stop.

  George W. Bartlett: The Algonquin Park superintendent who made many crucial decisions during the confusing days surrounding Tom Thomson’s disappearance and subsequent burial in the Canoe Lake cemetery.

  Lawrie (“Larry”) Dickson and George Rowe: Canoe Lake guides, employed, on and off, by Mowat Lodge. They were friends of Thomson and renowned partiers.

  Charlie Scrim: Florist and a park visitor from Ottawa, friendly with the guides and Ranger Mark Robinson.

  Tom Wattie: Algonquin Park ranger stationed at North Tea Lake in the northwest corner of the park. Wattie and his family lived at South River, where Thomson liked to purchase special boards for his sketching. The Watties also had a cottage on Round Lake, in the northwest of the park, where Thomson sometimes stayed.

  Dr. Robert P. Little: Frequent Canoe Lake visitor from the United States. He was not there at the time of Tom Thomson’s death but wrote remembrances of the times. He was not related to William T. Little, author of The Tom Thomson Mystery (1970).

  Dr. Goldwin W. Howland: University of Toronto professor of neurology, who was vacationing at the Taylor Statten cabin on Little Wapomeo Island at the time of Thomson’s death. Howland sighted Thomson’s body and was the sole medical examiner of the body. He first noted that Thomson’s body had a bad bruise on the right temple, but Algonquin Park ranger Mark Robinson’s journal said left temple. Howland later changed his mind and said the bruise was on the left temple.

  Roy Dixon and R.H. Flavelle: The embalmer and undertaker from nearby Sprucedale and Kearney, respectively. They were charged with preparing the body at Canoe Lake and with burying Tom Thomson in the little cemetery overlooking the lake. Roy Dixon was Algonquin Park ranger Mark Robinson’s cousin.

  Dr. Arthur E. Ranney: North Bay coroner called in to investigate Thomson’s death. Ranney held a brief midnight inquiry at the Blecher cottage, declared death by drowning without so much as seeing the body and caught the first train out in the morning. His coroner’s report, if it even existed, has never been located.

  Franklin W. Churchill: The Huntsville undertaker assigned by Winnie Trainor, on behalf of the Thomson family, to exhume the body and ship it to Owen Sound for burial in the Thomson family plot at Leith. He insisted on working alone at night, casting suspicion on whether or not he had actually completed his task.

  Charles Plewman: A Mowat Lodge guest pressed into service as a pallbearer. He had never met Thomson, but many years later would make claims that would become a news sensation.

  Lieutenant Robert (“Robin”) and Daphne Crombie: Two guests at Mowat Lodge during the winter and spring of 1917 and again later in the year. In 1977 Daphne Crombie’s revelations concerning Tom Thomson, Winnie Trainor and the Frasers would become a second sensation.

  Blodwen Davies: Thomson’s first biographer and the first, eighteen years after his death, to raise the questions that have haunted the Tom Thomson saga to this day. Her early-1930s love affair with Sir Frederick Banting briefly involved the famous inventor of insulin in the Tom Thomson mystery.

  William T. Little: Family court judge and Canoe Lake regular, whose 1970 book, The Tom Thomson Mystery, became a Canadian bestseller.

  The Diggers: Four men—William T. Little, Frank Braught, Jack Eastaugh and Len “Gibby” Gibson—dug where it was believed Thomson had been buried in 1917. They uncovered a skeleton with a hole in the left temple.

  Dr. Noble Sharpe: Medical director of the crime detection laboratory of the attorney general of Ontario, who declared that the skeleton was, in fact, that of an Aboriginal person, who at one time had had an operation on his brain to relieve pressure, and could not, therefore, possibly be that of Tom Thomson.

  Dr. Harry Ebbs: Ebbs, a physician, married Taylor Statten’s daughter, Adele (usually called “Couchie”), and attended the 1956 dig with police following the discovery of the skeleton at Canoe Lake cemetery. He died in 1990, leaving behind notes that he had requested never be released in his lifetime.

  Kelso Roberts: Attorney General of Ontario at the time of the 1956 exhumation. He was the lead government figure announcing that the remains did not belong to Thomson.

  The McKeen Family: John McKeen had once lived next door to the Thomson family in Owen Sound. More than a half century after Tom Thomson died, two of John McKeen’s elderly cousins, Agnes and Margaret McKeen, then in their nineties, claimed that their late cousin and John Thomson, Tom’s father, had viewed the body in the casket that was delivered to the Thomsons’ Owen Sound home in the summer of 1917. This claim was made in early 1969, at a time when a CBC documentary had raised doubts concerning the whereabouts of Thomson’s final resting place. The Owen Sound Sun Times accepted the story at face value, noting that “Mr. Thomson expressed relief that he no longer had doubts as to the whereabouts of his son”—even though, at the time of burial, no such doubts had been raised.

  Dr. Wilfred T. Pocock: 1895–1987, Winnie Trainor’s physician and friend from 1919 until her death in 1962. He served as executor of her estate and passed away in 1987 at the age of ninety-two.

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter One Tom

  Chapter Two Winnie

  Chapter Three The North Country

  Chapter Four Canoe Lake

  Chapter Five War

  Chapter Six Spring 1917

  Chapter Seven The Search

  Chapter Eight The Hand of Winnie Trainor

  Chapter Nine The Sealed Casket

>   Chapter Ten Pointing Fingers

  Chapter Eleven Daphne

  Chapter Twelve Damage Control

  Chapter Thirteen A Child?

  Chapter Fourteen Life after Tom

  Chapter Fifteen The Dig

  Chapter Sixteen Revelation

  Chapter Seventeen The Power of Silence

  Chapter Eighteen Aftermath

  Chapter Nineteen Icon

  Chapter Twenty Jimmy’s Truth

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  Selected bibliography

  Photo permissions

  About the Author

  PROLOGUE

  A cold, steady rain was falling on the town the day Jimmy Stringer told me he had Tom Thomson’s shinbone stashed in his woodshed.

  It was the end of March, 1973. It had been raining off and on for several days, and the snow that had risen waist deep since the first streets had been ploughed back in November had all but washed away in the spring flush. The remnants of the tough winter could be found only in shaded backyards and in the deep bush surrounding this small community in Ontario’s cottage country.

  The town was in transition, that strange stretch between frozen ears and bitten, the time just before the ice goes out on the lakes and the leaves come out in the woods. Spring in Huntsville meant the little town on the western edge of Algonquin Park was perhaps the only place in all of Canada where both national sports—hockey and lacrosse—could be played at the same time. Goaltenders were first to switch from wooden hockey sticks to catgut lacrosse sticks, allowing them to catch and throw the ball rather than shoot gravel into the faces of attacking players. Once the crystallized snow banks melted away and a slapshot meant that goalies were also ducking small stones as well as the ball, all players switched to lacrosse equipment and with that one national sport blended into the other without so much as a time out.