All the Calm and Calamity 

June 21, 2025 - January 17, 2026

Arthur Lismer, War and Peace, n.d. Ink and gouache on card (heavy paper), 27.3 x 18.5 cm. Gift from an anonymous donor through the Ontario Heritage Trust, an agency of the Government of Ontario, 1988.

In the fall of 1914, as the First World War unfolded across Europe, Tom Thomson, A.Y. Jackson, Arthur Lismer, and Frederick Varley posed together for a photograph during a painting trip in Algonquin Park. The moment, seemingly ordinary, would come to mark a quiet divergence. While Jackson, Lismer, and Varley would go on to support the war effort as artists, Thomson remained rooted in the northern wilderness, choosing to paint the stillness of lakes and the steady rhythm of changing seasons.

All the Calm and Calamity explores the paradox at the heart of this moment—that war and peace, though seemingly opposed, often exist simultaneously. The luminous sketches Thomson created between 1914 and his untimely death in 1917 offer no direct commentary on war, yet they emerged from a world steeped in uncertainty and loss. Serene and introspective, these works overcome outward chaos to affirm the possibility of peace within a fractured world.

Presented alongside Thomson’s landscapes are powerful wartime works by Jackson, Varley, and Lismer—on loan from the Canadian War Museum and the McMichael Canadian Art Collection—that confront the stark realities of war. Together, these contrasting perspectives trace the fragile boundary between calmness and calamity, revealing how all four artists, each in their own way, bore witness to a world transformed by conflict.

Opening Reception: Saturday June 28, 2025 from 2:00pm to 4:00pm