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  In the summer of 1897, when she would have been twelve, Winnie’s name ceases to appear in the school listings. But there’s evidence in the archives of the Muskoka Heritage Centre that Winnie’s schooling in Huntsville continued at least until the turn of the century, when she turned fifteen. In a box containing a number of items that my cousin and I helped clear out from Winnie’s home in the summer of 1963, there’s a Primrose Exercise Book signed by Winnie and dated March 5, 1900. The box also holds handwritten notes on Canadian history, from earliest settlement to the 1885 Northwest Rebellion. And there’s a receipt showing that Winnie and Marie Trainor subscribed to the Little Learners Paper, indicating the high stock the Trainors put in knowledge.

  Winnie’s world, around the turn of the twentieth century, was one of ever-present danger. Accidents were common in the mills of Huntsville and area, the violence often harrowing. When a young worker, Robert Brady, died, the newspaper reported that he had been hoisting logs with a block and hook when he fell into the saw. The young man was sliced so quickly, his head, left shoulder and breast fell off to one side and the rest of his body to the other as he was “instantly ushered into eternity.”

  The Trainors had their own scare in the early spring of 1898 when Winnie’s father, Hugh, was crossing Cripple Lake with fellow Huntsville Lumber Company worker John Ellis. The ice had formed but had not set hard enough, and both broke through in deep water. Fortunately, each was carrying a pike pole—a long pole with a sharp point and a hook at the same end, used for dislodging jammed logs—and Hugh Trainor used his to work his way through the ice until he found footing and pulled himself free. Ellis was not so lucky. In freezing temperatures, Winnie’s father walked through deep snow to the nearby camp, and the loggers hurried back with a punt. They found Ellis’s pike pole pointing straight up, and when they pulled on it, the man’s body also rose from the bottom, his right hand frozen tightly around the pole.

  As Winnie entered her teen years, Huntsville was changing. A vote on prohibition passed, which would have pleased Captain Hunt, but outraged the ever-increasing number of families who had been recruited from poor villages in Italy to work in the tannery and had brought with them a European custom of wine with the evening meal. Meanwhile, the tannery workers, both Italian and non-Italian, grew so disenchanted with their new, somewhat tyrannical owner, C.O. Shaw, that they went on strike, but they buckled after a week without wages and grudgingly went back to work. Shaw finally won back a portion of their favour by starting up a small band of mostly Italian-Canadian musicians that, over the years, gained considerable notoriety as the Anglo-Canadian Concert Band, under the direction of Herbert L. Clarke, who had once played under the baton of the famous American conductor John Philip Sousa.

  A window onto the world outside was finally opening. The band played at the Canadian National Exhibition and was part of the first big band radio broadcast when Toronto’s CFRB aired a live concert by Clarke and his charges. Telegraphs and newspapers brought north on the daily trains carried news of the progress of the conflict in South Africa, commonly known as the Boer War. Huntsville held parades in support of the war effort, with schoolchildren singing “Rule, Britannia!” to celebrate the relief of the besieged town of Ladysmith. Huntsville was, of course, staunchly in support of all things British. When the Toronto Daily Star dared suggest that Huntsville might be a good destination for refugees from the conflict, as the town was known to be actively seeking new residents to take up jobs at the tannery and mills, the Forester shot back: “Boers ought to thrive in a good stock-raising country like Muskoka, but we have made a bid for a higher and more human class of settlers, and we are getting them.”

  Winnie was sixteen when Queen Victoria died after sixty-four years on the British throne. Later that year, in the fall of 1901, the Duke and Duchess of Cornwall passed through on the Royal Train. Winnie would have been among the villagers gathering before dawn in anticipation of sighting the visiting nobility. First, a train carrying Sir Wilfrid Laurier and the Earl and Countess of Minto arrived at 8:22 a.m. (Lord Minto was then serving as governor general of Canada.) They were greeted by a cheering throng and four hundred schoolchildren waving small Union Jack flags.

  Winnie’s former classmate, Miss Cora Shay, also sixteen, was presented to Prime Minister Laurier. She stood only thirty inches tall and weighed a mere thirty-two pounds. The daughter of Allan Shay (who had sold the hill lots where most of the town had been built), Cora presented Laurier with a bouquet of flowers.

  Twenty minutes later, the Royal Train blew its whistle as it approached the station. The ten-car, two-engine train—the last coach named “Cornwall”—hissed to a stop, and the mayor, Dr. J.W. Hart, was invited on board to meet the royal couple. When he emerged moments later with the duke—later to rule as George V—a huge cheer went up. Wearing a black serge suit and a dapper, fawn-coloured felt hat, the duke spoke briefly in a deep, distinctive voice to convey the best wishes of his father, King Edward VII, who was said to be ill but recovering. The schoolchildren then sang “The Maple Leaf Forever.”

  The duchess appeared briefly at the doorway just as the locomotive started up again. “The Duchess! The Duchess!” a man in the crowd shouted as he tossed his hat into the air. “Hurrah! Hurrah!”

  The crowd then literally picked him up and rolled him, hatless, over their hands toward the startled duchess—later to be Queen Mary—who smiled and offered a quick royal wave before ducking behind the door of the departing train.

  Cora Shay’s moment in the spotlight launched a career. The following year she was off to a six-month engagement with Bostock’s Show in South Bend, Indiana, where she was advertised as “a most interesting conversationalist”—as if someone so small should somehow not even be able to talk. She returned home but was soon off again, this time to the Gaskell & Mundy Carnival, where she appeared as “Doll Lady” in a thirty-week tour of the United States. She was moved about in her own Pullman car, the parlour furnished to scale, and it was here that she would greet and speak with those willing to pay the cost of admission to see her with their own astonished eyes. For the next three decades or so, Cora Shay was an international celebrity known as “Princess Coritta.” She returned to Huntsville in 1928 in triumph, selling out the King George Theatre two nights running. She sang songs, recited her own poetry and held the crowds breathless as she told about her tours and meetings with royalty.

  Nothing quite so exotic awaited Winnie, but she, too, was about to leave town on her own, much smaller-scale adventure. Unlike most of the young women she had grown up with, she intended to have her own life, rather than merely hope for marriage and babies. Instead of going to work for one of the wealthier families in town as a housekeeper or cook, or remaining at home to care for her parents, as was so often the life chosen for one of a family’s daughters, she pursued her own independence. With her parents’ blessing, she set off for Lindsay, Ontario, and St. Joseph’s Academy, a small school run by the Loretto Sisters, to study bookkeeping. It was, for its time, an unusual career choice—bookkeeping being largely the province of men—but she was good with numbers and highly organized, and she graduated from the academy with ease.

  In the fall of 1903, the eighteen-year-old Winnie was hired on as the bookkeeper for the Forester. A year later she switched jobs to take on more responsibility, handling the accounts and general office management for Tudhope’s grocery store on Main Street. She continued to live at home with her parents and her younger sister, Marie, who was finishing school and had her own ambitions to become a nurse. Neither of them planned on being the child-servant who would stay home to care for her parents for as long as they lived.

  The Trainor girls had their own minds. They were outspoken and opinionated and often argued with each other. Their belief that they had rights as women might have flowed easily from their mother, Margaret, who was becoming more and more involved with the WCTU. At one point the women’s organization held a “Mock Parliament,” and Margaret, playing the ro
le of the member of Parliament for Glengarry, took part in a debate on “The Enfranchisement of Men,” drawing attention to the absurdity of the principle that allowed only men to vote because only men could be trusted to cast votes sensibly.

  There’s another photo of Winnie, taken during this time—very likely at Richard Sylvester’s photography studio on Centre Street. Someone has written in pen over the photograph: “Miss Winnie Trainor Huntsville Ont. Picture Taken in the Early 1900s.” She is tall and dark and is wearing a magnificent flowered hat (likely an Easter hat); a full, formal coat; and a mink stole. Her hands are in a muff, also of mink, done in the style that makes the pelts seem alive as they wrap themselves around her hands. She has high cheekbones and a finely sculpted nose, and her dark, difficult, jet-black hair is folded back into a bun under that magnificent hat. She doesn’t look particularly comfortable being so dressed up. There seems very little vanity about her and a fair bit of impatience. Her eyes are her most striking feature: she appears to be staring down the camera, hurrying the uncomfortable moment along.

  By 1912, the year Tom Thomson first visited Algonquin Park, Hugh Trainor’s job with the Huntsville Lumber Company was going well enough that he was able to purchase a little cottage on Canoe Lake. This body of water was easy to reach from Huntsville on the Grand Trunk Railway line, requiring only one change, at Scotia Junction, to the line that ran through the park toward Ottawa. Canoe Lake was approximately three kilometres long, running north and south, and about a kilometre and a half across at its widest point. It had jagged bays, sand beaches, granite outcroppings, a number of small creeks (Potter being the largest) and several islands around the narrows that formed its “waist.” It connected by channels to two much smaller lakes: Joe to the north and Bonita to the south. Bonita connected to Tea Lake, which took its name from the steeped colour of the waters of all the Algonquin lakes. Canoe Lake was surrounded by low, rolling hills, with white pines periodically reaching high above the treeline as if standing sentinel over the postcard landscape.

  The Trainor cabin had originally been built as a mini-headquarters for Algonquin Park rangers on the northwestern shore of Canoe Lake. But when roomier headquarters were established at Cache Lake, the ranger cabin, with its large kitchen, porch and boathouse was rented out. By the time the Trainors took it over, it was already known locally as the “Manse,” a name it acquired after a Presbyterian minister and his family had stayed there one summer.

  There had once been a village close to where the Manse stood. At its peak, Mowat—named after Oliver Mowat, a Father of Confederation and later premier of Ontario—boasted a population of five hundred. The community had grown with the establishment of the Gilmour Lumber Company along the northwest shore of the lake in the 1890s, when David Gilmour, who fancied himself a bit of a visionary, gained the timber rights to the Oxtongue River watershed. That area stretched from the waters of Canoe Lake all the way to Lake of Bays. Gilmour’s grand plan—breathtaking in its scope, even if it would prove too ambitious—was to float timber cut around Canoe Lake some 400 kilometres to his mill at Trenton on the shore of Lake Ontario’s Bay of Quinte. It involved building a series of dams and constructing complicated steam-engine-driven tramways. Although he did complete the project, it was of no use in the end, since, by the time the wood reached its destination, rot had already set in.

  Gilmour’s solution was to build a new mill right at Canoe Lake. By 1897 the mill was operational and so many workers were living in the area that the village of Mowat sprang up, with its own school and even a tiny cemetery on the hillside overlooking the lake. Gilmour unfortunately went bankrupt trying to pay the bills he’d incurred for his grand scheme. The mill shut down, the spur lines were taken up and Mowat largely vanished, though some of the buildings became summer cottages.

  By the early 1900s it had become very fashionable in Ontario to have a summer place by the lake—even for those of limited means, as the Trainors were. Those who did not seek out shoreline property often preferred the comfort of lodges; it was a time of phenomenal resort growth in nearby Muskoka. Trains left Toronto’s Union Station packed with well-heeled tourists, many of them American, heading for Gravenhurst, Bracebridge or Huntsville, where they could board steamers bound for their final destinations. By 1910 Muskoka boasted more than a hundred establishments, from the grandest hotels to simple boarding houses.

  Algonquin Park was hardly as overrun, but it did have one spectacular showplace: The Highland Inn at Cache Lake. In a 1912 Canadian Pacific Railway poster advertising three great Canadian hotels, the inn was given equal billing to Ottawa’s Château Laurier and Winnipeg’s Fort Garry. Rates at The Highland Inn ran from $2.50 to $3 a day or $16 to $18 a week. Today, it costs that much just to enter the park with the intention of stopping somewhere along Highway 60 to hike a trail.

  Far more rustic, and less expensive, lodgings were to be had at Canoe Lake, where Shannon Fraser, who had been hired to dismantle the old mill machinery, had decided to stay on with his wife, Annie, and their young daughter, Mildred. The Frasers were converting the largest Gilmour building into Mowat Camp, which they expanded in 1913, changing its name to Mowat Lodge. It was here that Tom Thomson stayed when he returned to Canoe Lake that year for his second visit to the area. The Frasers—red-haired, freckled Shannon, with the broad hands of a ploughman, and dark, stubby and kindly Annie—would become familiar figures in Thomson’s life. Throughout his remaining years, he made Mowat Lodge his base of operations whenever he was at Canoe Lake.

  Tom and Winnie first met in 1913, according to a letter Winnie sent to the Thomson family following the painter’s death. He would have been almost thirty-six and she, twenty-eight. It was well known by all who saw them together in the years thereafter at Canoe Lake and in Huntsville that there was something significant between the painter and the local girl—though certain members of the Thomson family later downplayed the notion.

  A rare photo of Winnie at this time shows her standing outdoors in the sunlight with her young Huntsville friend, Irene May. Both are dressed similarly—in black leather boots; long, dark skirts; and white, long-sleeved blouses, and they’re carrying wide-brimmed straw hats. The photo appears to have been taken in Huntsville, as they’re standing in front of a stone wall, and in the distance over the water, some buildings can be made out. Winnie is tall, with long, elegant arms and a thin waist. Her posture is impeccable, confident. Her hair has been carefully pinned and positioned but still flares in places where it has sprung free of its restraints. She squints somewhat in the sunlight, but her face is friendly and inviting. Heads would have turned at her passing.

  Dr. Robert P. Little, a former guide and longtime camper in Algonquin Park, wrote down some reminiscences in 1955, saying that he passed several times through Canoe Lake and remembered the small cottage owned by the Trainor family. Little dismissed the common notion that Tom Thomson was too wrapped up in his work to bother with women. “Tom did have a girl friend,” Little wrote, “—the comely Winifred Trainor. They were frequently seen together, and Tom would go to Huntsville to visit her.”

  Tom Thomson’s parents, John and Margaret Thomson, at Rose Hill farm, Leith, Ont.

  The Thomson brothers—Tom, Ralph, George, Henry, with Tom Harkness. Another brother, James, died in childhood.

  As a teenager, Tom Thomson was said to be athletic and taken with the outdoors and nature.

  Young Tom Thomson had trouble finding his way, little interested in school or his first choice of career, training as a machinist with a propeller manufacturer.

  Two of Algonquin Park’s greatest characters: Jimmy and Wam Stringer of Potter Creek, Canoe Lake. Photograph taken circa 1960.

  Chief Ranger Tom McCormick, the author’s grandfather, at Lake of Two Rivers in the early 1950s. McCormick’s brother, Roy, married Marie Trainor, Winnie’s younger sister. He knew and disapproved of Tom Thomson.

  Tom Thomson photograph of a woman long identified as Miss Winnifred Trainor of Huntsville, O
ntario, and Canoe Lake, Algonquin Park. It’s not her.

  The real Winnie Trainor and her Huntsville friend Irene Ewing, circa 1915, photograph source unknown.

  Winnie Trainor (identified with “x”) at the St. Joseph’s Academy, Lindsay, Ont., which she attended around age 17.

  Photograph of Winnie taken in the early 1900s, likely at Richard Sylvester’s photography studio directly across Centre Street from her family home in Huntsville.

  Tom Thomson’s Figure of a Lady, Laura. The Thomson family has always believed this is Winnifred Trainor, painted on hill overlooking Canoe Lake. Previously said to have been painted in 1916, it is now dated as fall of 1915.

  Winnie circa 1917, age 32, portrait by internationally recognized forensic artist Victoria Lywood.

  THREE THE NORTH COUNTRY

  During the winter of 1912–1913, Tom Thomson turned one of the small sketches from his first northern travels into a large canvas and called it Northern Lake. The painting was accepted for display at the Forty-first Ontario Society of Artists Exhibition, and, much to his surprise, it was purchased by the provincial Department of Education for the impressive sum of $250. Elated, Thomson took the cheque to the bank and cashed it in for 250 one-dollar bills, then hauled the bills back to the studio, where, in the presence of MacDonald and others, he tossed them in the air while dancing a jig of celebration.

  At the time, the small group of friends was beginning to believe they might be able to become full-time painters. In fact, most of the illustrators at Rous and Mann Ltd., where workers such as Thomson were being paid seventy-five cents an hour, had the same ambition. They had the advantage of knowing J.E.H. MacDonald, who was a member of the prestigious Arts & Letters Club of Toronto. In the fall of 1911, MacDonald had succeeded in mounting a small exhibition there, featuring landscape paintings from the Toronto and Lake Scugog areas. A few of the works were sketches by Tom Thomson, though at this point, he didn’t really consider himself a painter. In fact, it was not until he set off to see the North Country in 1912 that he even allowed himself the small conceit of a new sketchbox.