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About Tom Thomson

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Home/.../Arts, Culture and Heritage/Tom Thomson Art Gallery/About Tom Thomson

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Tom Thomson (1877-1917) is considered one of the most important and influential Canadian artists. Together with members of the Group of Seven, he created a distinct approach to portraying rugged Canadian landscapes. Thomson, grew up and is buried in the Owen Sound area. The Tom Thomson Art Gallery is named for the iconic Canadian landscape artist and houses a nationally significant collection of his work.  An exhibition of Thomson’s small oil sketches, graphics, memorabilia and archival materials offer unique insight into one of Canada’s most influential artists of the 20th century. 

Our Collection of Tom Thomson's artwork

See our Gallery's Collection as shown in Tom Thomson's Catalogue Raisonné, researched and written by Joan Murray.

Tom Thomson's Biography

The following biography has been developed by David Huff, Curator of Collections at the Tom Thomson Art Gallery in Owen Sound. The material has been compiled from various sources, including the Gallery’s archives, Charles Hill, and Joan Murray.  Anyone interested in learning more about Tom Thomson’s life can go to Find Out More About Tom for a list of books, films and other websites about Thomson.

Tom Thomson

Tom Thomson, the brilliant, pioneering Canadian artist for whom the City of Owen Sound’s art gallery is named, was born near Claremont, Ontario, northeast of Toronto on August 5, 1877, the sixth of ten children born to John Thomson and Margaret Matheson. Two months later, the family moved to their new home, Rose Hill, near Leith, eleven kilometres northeast of Owen Sound.  It was in this quiet rolling country side, overlooking the shores of Georgian Bay that Thomson grew up.

Thomson was raised on the farm and received his education locally, though ill health kept him out of school for a period of time.   He was said to have been enthusiastic about sports, swimming, hunting and fishing. He shared his family’s sense of humour and love of music.
Indeed, Thomson’s Victorian upbringing gave him an immense appreciation for the arts.  Drawing, music, and design were valued and honoured pursuits. Within this Scottish family structure, however, there were also pressures to succeed, to find an occupation, marry and have a family.

Thomson had a restless start to his adulthood. Unsuccessful at enlisting for the Boer War in 1899 due to health reasons, he apprenticed as a machinist at Kennedy’s Foundry in Owen Sound for eight months.  Still undecided on a career, he briefly attended the Canada Business College in Chatham.  In 1901, he moved to Seattle, Washington to join his brother George at his business college. Here he became proficient in lettering and design, working as a commercial artist during the next few years.  By 1905, he had returned Canada to work as a senior artist at Legg Brothers, a photo-engraving firm in Toronto.  Thomson continued to return home to visit his family his entire life, though his parents had, by this time, sold the farm in Leith and moved to a house in Owen Sound.

In 1909, Thomson joined the staff of Grip Ltd., a prominent Toronto photo-engraving house, and this proved to be a turning point in his life. The firm’s head designer, artist-poet J.E.H. MacDonald, contributed much to Thomson’s artistic development, sharpening his sense of design. Fellow employees included Arthur Lismer, Fred Varley, Franklin Carmichael and Franz Johnson – all adventurous young painters who often organized weekend painting trips to the countryside around Toronto. After Thomson’s death, these men, together with Lawren Harris and A.Y. Jackson, would go on to form Canada’s first national school of painting, the Group of Seven.

Curator Charles Hill comments that “Thomson’s surviving artwork prior to 1911 consists of drawings in ink, watercolour and coloured chalk, of women’s heads very much in the vein of the American illustrator Charles Dana Gibson, who had established the “Gibson girl” look, as well as ink and watercolour landscapes done around Leith, Owen Sound and Toronto and illuminated text presented as gifts to members of his family or friends.” He also states “The arrangements of some texts and designs has a similarity to the patterning of stained glass and are most likely characteristic of the Arts and Crafts-influenced commercial work he might have done.”

In 1912, inspired by tales of Ontario’s “far north,” Thomson travelled to the Mississagi Forest Reserve near Sudbury and to Algonquin Park, a site that was to inspire much of his future artwork. It was during this same year that he began to work for the commercial art firm Rous and Mann.

Thomson was joined there by Varley, Carmichael and Lismer. Later the same year, at J.E.H. MacDonald’s studio, Thomson met art enthusiast Dr. James MacCallum, a prominent Toronto Ophthalmologist.

When out painting on location, Thomson would use a small wooden sketch box, not much bigger than a piece of letter-sized paper, to carry his oil paints, palette, and brushes; his small painting boards were safely tucked away from each other in slots fitted in the top. Sitting down in the canoe, on a log or rock, with the sketch box in front of him, he would quickly capture the landscape around him.

In 1913, Thomson exhibited his first major canvas, A Northern Lake, at the Ontario’s Society of Artists exhibition.  The Government of Ontario purchased the canvas for $250 a considerable sum in 1913, considering Thomson’s commercial artist’s weekly salary was $35 in 1912.  That same year, Dr. James MacCallum guaranteed Thomson’s expenses for a year, enabling him to devote all his time to painting.  Taking leave from his work as a commercial artist, Thomson returned north.

Thomson’s home base, when he visited Algonquin was Mowat Lodge, a small hotel in the tiny community of Mowat at the north end of Canoe Lake. Thomson would stay at the Lodge in the early spring as he waited for the lakes and rivers to break up before he would go camping, and again in the late fall. Painting and fishing competed for his attentions in the park.  He was not only an active guide for his colleagues from Toronto, but also for other summer park visitors.

From a letter Thomson sent to Dr. MacCallum from Camp Mowat, on October 6, 1914, he wrote:  “Jackson and myself have been making quite a few sketches lately and I will send a bunch down with Lismer when he goes back.  He & Varley are greatly taken with the look of things here, just now the maples are about all stripped of leaves but the birches are very rich in colour.   We are all working away but the best I can do does not do the place much justice in the way of beauty.”

Charles Hill notes that it appears that painting was not something Thomson learned easily and the process was accompanied by much self-doubt.  Jackson recounted that in the fall of 1914 in Algonquin Park, Thomson threw his sketch box into the woods in frustration.  Jackson claimed that Thomson “was so shy he could hardly be induced to show his sketches.”

War had broken out in Europe in summer of 1914.  Thomson was not able to enlist due to health reasons, but many of his artist friends and colleges did, or went overseas to work as war artists.

From 1914 to 1917 Thomson spent the spring and fall sketching, and acted as a guide and fire ranger during the summer in Algonquin Park.  He became an expert canoeist and woodsman.  He spent the winter in “Thomson’s Shack,” a construction shed outside the Studio Building in Toronto.  It was here where he painted his now famous canvases, The Jack Pine, The West Wind, and Northern River, among others.
This was a time of great change in the world with the First World War raging in Europe. As Thomson continued to paint in the North, he become interested in the subtle changes all around him. Thomson documented changes in the season, shifts in the weather and changes in the light over the day; for him these were exciting changes.

Many of Thomson’s paintings from Georgian Bay and Algonquin Park strike an interesting balance; his imagery is at once innovative, but rooted in careful observation. His artwork changed dramatically: from painting every detail in an almost photographic manner in his earlier work, to capturing the true spirit of the landscape around him. Within a six-year period, he had developed a strong personal style of bold colour combinations, expressive brush strokes and unique images of the Northern landscape.

Art historians have noted that Thomson paintings from this period show the artist’s appreciation of the rugged beauty of Algonquin Park.  The bold immediacy of his sketches was to define a new style of painting that would be attributed as uniquely Canadian and would shape how generations of people think about the Canadian landscape.

Thomson was able to convey the dynamism and volatility of nature, breaking away from the traditional style of detail painting in his earlier works, to bold splashes of colour and non-traditional compositions.  His paintings came to suggest the drama of the woodland and the forces of nature on the forests and lakes.

Thomson found beauty in the most uncommon scenes – Jackson wrote: “To most people Thomson’s country was a monotonous dreary waste, yet out of one little stretch he found riches undreamed of.  Not knowing all the conventional definitions of beauty, he found it all beautiful:  muskeg, burnt and drowned land, log chutes, beaver dams, creeks, wild rivers and placid lakes, wild flowers, northern lights, the flight of wild geese and the changing seasons from spring to summer to autumn.”

These were important times spent in Algonquin, bringing together Thomson and his fellow artists to exchange ideas, techniques, stories and philosophies, inevitably building strong collegial bonds.  His confidence as a painter really developed during these years, encouraged and coaxed along by his peers.  Thomson, the man, also found peace.  He was seeking freedom from the repressive confines of Victorian family life and escape from the hustle and bustle of Toronto’s art world where he never quite fit in.  It was in the solitude of Algonquin’s lakes and woods that he became himself.

Tom Thomson died sometime between July 8, when he was last seen, and July 16, 1917, when his body was found floating in Canoe Lake.  The cause of death was recorded as accidental drowning.

On Monday, July 16, Dr. G. W. Howland, a Toronto physician and professor of neurology at the University of Toronto, saw an unidentifiable object lying in the water some yards from the shore. Dr. Howland asked two local guides, George Rowe and Lourie Dickson, who were on the water at the time, to investigate. They found Thomson’s body.

Thomson would have celebrated his fortieth birthday on August 5.  His watch had stopped at 12:14.  Dr. Howland was asked to examine the body before burial and reported a bruise about 10 cm across the right temple, air issuing from the lungs, and some bleeding from the right ear.  And though his death was officially recorded as accidental due to drowning, his demise has become one of Canada’s greatest mysteries.
Thomson was initially buried in a small cemetery up the hill from Mowat Lodge, overlooking Canoe Lake in Algonquin Park.  But at the request of his family, the body was reinterred in the family plot beside Leith United Church.

In September of 1917, J.E.H. MacDonald, Dr. MacCullum and J.W. Beatty built a stone cairn on Hayhurst Point, overlooking Canoe Lake in Algonquin Park, close to one of Thomson’s favourite camp sites across from the bay from Mowat.  The cairn is a memorial to Tom Thomson, marking the date and the place where he had died.  Thomson’s death was a tragedy for his fellow artists – they lost an inspiring colleague, a great friend and their guide to the north woods.  This untimely loss prompted a clarification of his artist friends’ vision for Canadian art; it strengthened their resolve and gave rise to the formation of The Group of Seven.

The cairn’s inscription was composed by Thomson’s friend, painter J. E. H. MacDonald, and reads:

TO THE MEMORY OF TOM THOMSON ARTIST, WOODSMAN AND GUIDE WHO WAS DROWNED IN CANOE LAKE JULY 8TH, 1917
HE LIVED HUMBLY BUT PASSIONATELY WITH THE WILD 
IT MADE HIM BROTHER TO ALL UNTAMED THINGS OF NATURE 
IT DREW HIM APART AND REVEALED ITSELF WONDERFULLY TO HIM
IT SENT HIM OUT FROM THE WOODS ONLY TO SHOW THESE REVELATIONS THROUGH HIS ART AND IT TOOK HIM TO ITSELF AT LAST.

The interest in Tom Thomson, the man, his art and the myth has increased dramatically over the years since his death. The people of Owen Sound named their new civic art gallery to honour the artist in 1967. With strong support from the Thomson family, the Gallery’s collection of Thomson’s artwork has grown over the years to become one of great national significance. Visitors from around the world travel every year to visit the Tom Thomson Art Gallery to see the exquisite collection of works and memorabilia of one of Canada’s greatest artists and most mythic figures.

Tom Thomson's Chronology

Reproduced on this site with permission from Joan Murray.

 1877 to 1904
1877

August 5: Thomas John Thomson is born in Claremont, Ontario, in a home on R.R. # 5, the sixth of ten children of John Thomson (1840-1930) and Margaret J. Matheson (sometimes spelled Mathison or Mathewson) (1842-1925). The eldest child of the family, George, was born in 1868; then came Elizabeth in 1869, Henry in 1871, Louise in 1873, Minnie in 1875, Ralph in 1880, James Brodie in 1882, Margaret in 1884 and Fraser in 1886.

October 23: John Thomson pays $6,600.00 for one hundred acres with a house and barn, lot number thirty-six, concession A, at Leith in the Township of Sydenham, Ontario, 11 kilometres from Owen Sound. The family moves in.


1898

Receives an inheritance of about $2,000 from his grandfather, Thomas (“Tam”) Thomson (1806-1875).


1899

Works at William Kennedy & Sons Ltd., a foundry, machine shop and pattern shop in Owen Sound, as a machinist apprentice, but quits after eight months, in August.


1900

September: Moves to Chatham, Ontario, to attend the Canada Business College. He boards with a family named Baxter, likely that of William Baxter, a printer with a “Book and Job” shop on King Street, whose residence is on Delaware Avenue (Vernon’s City of Chatham Directory, 1900-1902). He stays eight months.


1901

Spring: Returns to Owen Sound.
Late summer: Stops in Winnipeg en route to Seattle, Washington, where his brother George and cousin F.R. McLaren, both graduates of Canada Business College in Chatham (McLaren was also an instructor), started the Consolidated College Company in 1894-95, a school they had formed by consolidating their own school, the Acme Business College, with the Seattle & Puget Sound Business College (advertisement in Seattle City Directory). By 1903, the main operation of the Consolidated College Company is the Acme Business College (Seattle City Directory).
Works at the Diller Hotel, Seattle, as a lift boy, rooming with Mabel and P. Pitt Shaw, 703 Twenty-First Street.


1901-02

Brother Ralph arrives in Seattle.


1902

In January, brother Henry arrives in Seattle.
Attends the Acme Business College, S.E. Corner Second Avenue and Pike for six months.

Late autumn: Joins Maring and Ladd as a pen artist and engraver. C.C. Maring, the head of the firm, had also been an instructor at the Canada Business College in Chatham.

John and Margaret Thomson sell the farm at Leith. They live for a short time with their daughter Elizabeth and son-in-law Thomas J. Harkness on a farm below Annan, then they buy a property near Sydenham school on Eighth Street in Owen Sound (exact date of purchase unknown). 


1903

Thomson, still with Maring and Blake (the firm’s name changes this year), continues to room with the Shaws, who move this year to 2014 East Cherry, around the corner from their old house.

First published work appears in an advertisement for the Acme Business College, which appears on Christmas Day 1903 in the Seattle Republican. Although inspired by an advertisement for the Canada Business College in a pamphlet from Chatham, “Canada’s Greatest School of Business” (1903), Thomson simplifies the design, giving it more impact. He signs it “Thomson.”

Thomson moves to the Seattle Engraving Company, 115 Third Avenue South. He is still boarding at 2014 East Cherry.


1904-05

Thomson returns to Owen Sound.

 1905 to 1911 

1905

March: George Thomson and Frank McLaren sell the Acme Business College.
June: Thomson joins the art department of Legg Brothers, a photo-engraving firm in Toronto, Ontario, as senior artist.


1906

Resident at 34 Elm Street (Toronto City Directory).
Is said to have enrolled in night classes at the Central Ontario School of Art and Design, 165 King Street West, Toronto, probably studying drawing from the antique (plaster casts) and from life; is said to have continued his studies with William Cruikshank. The school was renamed several times, most notably the Ontario College of Art (OCA) in 1912 and the Ontario College of Art and Design University (OCADU) in 2010.

Visits Owen Sound on weekends.


1907

Resident at 54 Elm Street, home of Joseph R. Walton, Harness Maker (Toronto City Directory).


1908

Resident at 54 Elm Street (Toronto City Directory).
August 18: John and Margaret Thomson pay $525 for the land for a house they build at 528 Fourth Avenue East, Owen Sound.


1909

Resident at 99 Gerrard Street East, home of Mrs. Esther Plewes (Plewis) (Toronto City Directory).

January (or December 1908): Hired at Grip Limited, Engravers, 48 Temperance Street, Toronto, where he works for J.E.H. MacDonald, senior artist with the firm, and Albert H. Robson, art director.


1910

Resident at 99 Gerrard Street East (Toronto City Directory).


1911

Resident at 99 Gerrard Street East (Toronto City Directory).
February: Arthur Lismer joins the Grip firm, followed by Franklin Carmichael in April.

Thomson paints at Lake Scugog with H.B. (Ben) Jackson, a Grip employee.

November: Meets Lawren Harris at an exhibition of J.E.H. MacDonald’s sketches at the Arts and Letters Club, Toronto.

 1912 to 1917 

1912

Resident at 54 Alexander Street, home of Noah Luke (Toronto City Directory); later boards with William S. Broadhead, another Grip employee, at 119 Summerhill Avenue, and writes Dr. M.J. McRuer from that address; also boards with Benjamin Catchpole at the home of Mrs. McKenzie, Breadalbane Street (deposition on the painting On the Sydenham River, November 19, 1973).

May: Travels to Canoe Lake Station, Algonquin Park, with Ben Jackson; camps at Tea Lake Dam and Canoe Lake; meets the ranger Harry (Bud) Callighen.

Late July-23 September: Travels in the area of the Mississagi Forest Reserve, west of Sudbury, with William Broadhead. There they meet Archie Belaney, later known as Grey Owl, who is working as a ranger. Starting at Biscotasing, they paddle in a Peterborough canoe down Bisco Lake to Ramsey Lake, up the Spanish River, through Spanish Lake and portage into Canoe Lake, portage to Osagama Lake, then to Green Lake, then to the Mississagi Forest Reserve and reach the Aubinadong River, a branch of the Mississagi. They spend some time at Aubrey Falls, then make their way along the Mississagi River through the forty-mile (64 km) rapids to Squaw Chute.

August: F.H. Varley joins the Grip firm.

October: With other Grip artists, Thomson follows their art director, Albert Robson, to Rous and Mann Press Limited, 72 York Street. Meets Dr. J.M. MacCallum, an ophthalmologist, at J.E.H. MacDonald’s studio.


1913

Resident on Isabella Street; later moves to 66 Wellesley Street East.
April 5-26: Ontario Society of Artists Forty-first Annual Exhibition, Toronto. Thomson exhibits Northern Lake. It is purchased by the Ontario Government for $250. In the catalogue, his address is given as 66 Wellesley Street.

Decides to paint full-time; gets two-month leave of absence from Rous and Mann for a sketching trip north.

Spring and summer: Possibly works as a fire ranger on the Metagami Reserve, just south of Timmins, Ontario (the name Thomas Thomson appears in the 1913 pay list).

August (?): Goes to Algonquin Park, where he canoes from Canoe Lake to Manitou and North Tea Lakes in the northern part of the park and meets Tom Wattie, a ranger stationed on North Tea Lake, before returning to Canoe Lake.

November: Returns to Toronto via Huntsville. Dr. MacCallum introduces him to A.Y. Jackson, who is sharing Lawren Harris’s studio.


1914

January: Shares studio number one with Jackson in the new Studio Building on Severn Street.

February 7-28: Second Annual Exhibition of Little Pictures by Canadian Artists, Art Galleries of the Public Reference Library, Toronto. Thomson exhibits five sketches ranging in price from $20 to $25: Cumulus Clouds, Evening, Grey Day, Northern Lake, Winter.

March 14 – April 11: Ontario Society of Artists Forty-second Annual Exhibition, Toronto. Thomson exhibits Morning Cloud and Moonlight. Moonlight is bought by the National Gallery of Canada for $150. Thomson’s address is given in the catalogue as Studio Building, Severn Street.

March: Elected a member of the Ontario Society of Artists.

Late April: Returns to Algonquin Park, staying at Camp Mowat on Canoe Lake.

May 9-24: Camps in Algonquin Park with Arthur Lismer on Molly’s Island, Smoke Lake; they travel to Canoe, Ragged, Crown and Wolf Lakes.

May 30: Is at Parry Sound and two days later camps with Dr. MacCallum at French River; passes the next two months at MacCallum’s cottage, Go-Home Bay, Georgian Bay, sketching in the region.

Early August: Paddles and portages to Algonquin Park, travelling north along the French River to Lake Nipissing, then via South River to the park.

Mid-September: Is joined by A.Y. Jackson and they travel to and paint at Canoe, Smoke and Ragged Lakes.

Early October: They are joined by Arthur Lismer, his wife Esther, and their daughter, Marjorie, F.H. Varley and his wife, Maud.

Mid-October: Lismers and Varleys return to Toronto.

October 23: Jackson leaves for Toronto.

November 18: Thomson leaves for Toronto.

November: Royal Canadian Academy of Arts Thirty-seventh Annual Exhibition, Toronto. Thomson exhibits A Lake, Early Spring (possibly the canvas entitled Petawawa Gorges) and Frost After Rain. His address is given as Studio Building, Severn Street.

December 13: Royal Canadian Academy of Arts Patriotic Fund Sale. Thomson exhibits In Algonquin Park, which is purchased by the artist Marion Long for $50.
December Shares a studio in the Studio Building with Franklin Carmichael.


1915

March 13 – April 10: Ontario Society of Artists Forty-third Annual Exhibition, Toronto. Thomson exhibits Northern River, Split Rock and Georgian Bay Pines. Northern River is bought by the National Gallery of Canada for $500. His address is given as Studio Building, Severn Street.

Mid-March: Arrives in Algonquin Park, via Huntsville, where he stays at the home of Winifred Trainor for two days; he travels to Tea Lake and Big Cauchon Lake; in the Kearney area, he stays at McCann’s Halfway House.

April 28 – May 19: Thomson and George Rowe guide the Johnston Brothers of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to Pine River; they travel to Tea Lake. On their return, Thomson and Rowe travel to Big Bear Lake.

July 17: Assists H.A. Callighen in bringing tourists from Joe Lake Station to Smoke Lake by canoe.

July 21: Returns from Swan (Rain) Lake.

Late July or early August: Buys a new Chestnut canoe, silk tent and other camping supplies and starts out from Canoe Lake on a long trip, likely to the Magnetawan River, coming out at South River around Labour Day.

August 28 – September 13: Canadian National Exhibition, Toronto. Thomson exhibits In Georgian Bay and Pines, Georgian Bay. His address is given as Studio Building, Severn Street.

September 8-16: Provincial Exhibition, Halifax. Thomson exhibits a canvas, A Northern Lake, Early Spring, and six sketches, Canadian Wildflowers, Winter Morning, Sun in the Bush, Birches, and two of Autumn Colours. The canvas is priced at $350, the sketches $25 each.

September: Paddles back up South River, crosses into North Tea Lake and Cauchon Lake, travelling perhaps as far as Mattawa.

End September to mid-October: At Mowat.

Mid–October: Visits the MacCallum cottage on Georgian Bay with J.E.H. MacDonald to measure for a series of decorative panels commissioned by Dr. MacCallum as murals for his cottage.

November: Camps at Round (now Kawawaymog) Lake with Tom Wattie and Dr. Robert McComb; paints at Mud Bay.

Late November: At first snow, travels to Huntsville for a brief stay at the home of Winifred Trainor before returning to Toronto. Moves into the shack, formerly used by a cabinet maker, behind the Studio Building on Severn Street, which he shares with Arthur Lismer.

December-January: Exhibits a group of sketches at the Arts and Letters Club, Toronto.

Winter: Paints seven decorative panels for the MacCallum cottage. When they are installed in April 1916, only three of Thomson’s fit.


1916

Mid-March: Stops in Huntsville at the home of Winifred Trainor on his way to Algonquin Park.

March 11-April 15: Ontario Society of Artists Forty-fourth Annual Exhibition, Toronto. Thomson exhibits The Birches, Spring Ice, Moonlight and The Hardwoods. Moonlight is illustrated in the catalogue. Spring Ice is bought by the National Gallery of Canada for $300. His address is given as the Studio Building, Severn Street.

March: Exhibits landscapes of Northern Ontario at the Toronto Heliconian Club.

April or early May: Is visited by Lawren Harris, his cousin Chester Harris and Dr. MacCallum; they travel to Lake Cauchon; Harris and Thomson then proceed on to Aura Lee Lake.

Late May: Takes a job as a fire ranger and reports to Achray, a park station at Grand Lake on the south branch of the Petawawa (now Barron) River, where he works with Edward Godin.

August: Thomson and Edward Godin canoe down the south branch of the Petawawa River to the Barron Canyon, then canoe up the north branch of the river to Lake Traverse.

August 26-September 11: Canadian National Exhibition, Toronto. Thomson exhibits Moonlight. It is reproduced in the catalogue. His address is given as Studio Building, Severn Street.

September 13-21: Nova Scotia Provincial Exhibition, Halifax. Thomson exhibits The Hardwoods priced at $300.

October 4: Is at Basin Depot.

Late October or early November: Returns to Toronto.

November 16-December 16: Thirty-eighth Annual Exhibition of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts, Montreal. Thomson exhibits The Hardwoods. His address is given as 25 Severn Street.


1917

Early April: Arrives at Mowat Lodge.

April 28: Buys a guide’s licence.

May 24: Dr. MacCallum and his son Arthur arrive for a fishing trip.

July 8: Park Ranger Mark Robinson, Mrs. Thomas (the wife of the local railway section head) and Mrs. Colson (the wife of the owner of the Hotel Algonquin on Joe Lake ) see Thomson and Shannon Fraser walking down to Joe Lake Dam in the morning. Robinson notes in his diary that Thomson “left Fraser’s Dock after 12:30 pm to go to tea lake Dam or west lake.”

July 16: Thomson’s body is recovered from Canoe Lake and buried at once, overlooking the lake.

July 21: An undertaker from Huntsville arrives to collect the body and ship it to Owen Sound on the instructions of George Thomson. It is buried in the family plot at Leith.

September 27: A memorial cairn with a bronze tablet designed by J.E.H. MacDonald is erected at Canoe Lake by MacDonald, J.W. Beatty, Shannon Fraser and George Rowe.

Find Out More About Tom

 
Books and Movies about Tom Thomson
A list of some of the many books and movies about Tom Thomson.
Tom Thomson's Catalogue Raisonné, researched and written by Joan Murray
See the most complete collection of Tom Thomson's artwork online Tom Thomson's Catalogue Raisonné, researched and written by Joan Murray
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