great deep winter read about Tom Thomson

NORTHERN LIGHT:  The enduring mystery of Tom Thomson and the woman who loved him
Roy MacGregor
Vintage Canada, 2010
357 pages

It's a credit to our small Marmora Library that I've been able to read biographies of Canada's three foremost artists. A previous posting reviewed bios on Emily Carr and Norval Morrisseau, and this history of Tom Thomson completes the trilogy.

I found this to be the perfect deep winter read for many reasons. In effect it's really three different stories in several genres which are thoroughly intertwined. First it's MacGregor's thorough and life long investigation into the mysterious death of painter Tom Thomson. It's a detective novel, a real life whodunnit, about the murder of Thomson on Canoe Lake in Algonquin Park a century ago. It's taken a century for improvements in forensics and changes in public attitude to make it possible for this story to be told and unravelled.

While telling the Tom Thomson story the reader also gets Roy MacGregor's own take on growing up in rural Ontario in the town of Huntsville. Those of us living in Marmora know only too well the  joys and pains of small town life - the immediacy of the beauty of nature, but also the inquisitive and sometimes too knowing nature of our fellow villagers. So when we read Northern Light we're also getting partial biographies of both the author, respected writer and journalist Roy MacGregor, and we're also getting his history lesson on rural Ontario.

Then there's the equally fascinating story of Winnie Trainor, the woman in the title. Who was she, and what role did she play in Tom Thomson's life and the mystery surrounding his death, and even his burial and current gravesite location? BTW, Winnie was a distant relative of the author, so there's a personal element in MacGregor's interest.

Living in Marmora, it's most likely you've also made the two hour drive to visit Algonquin Park. Even before I moved here three decades ago I'd twice paddled Canoe Lake and camped in the next portage, Joe Lake. I camped there many decades ago, paddling the length of Thomson's beloved lake and noting the memorial cairn in his honour. So it was a surprise to learn that the rough portage I'd made with a complaining big city girlfriend had once been a bustling rail spur community of 500 souls. I also learned a bit more Canadian art history - the fact that it was Tom Thomson who led his artist friends to Canoe Lake and Algonquin Park. His group of friends flourished after his death, becoming Canada's most famous school of artists, The Group of Seven.

This is a book to leisurely savour. It's long, but the content is so diffuse that it's never remotely boring. Relaxing. Thomson liked to visit Canoe Lake just before spring thaw when the ice would finally go out of his lake. I feel like that this crazy, yoyo of a winter. I too want the ice to go out and spring to arrive. Meanwhile, slowly reading Northern Light helped get me through several weeks of this winter of my discontent.



Canoe Lake Haiku 


bugless breeze
paddling past
Tom Thomson cairn


hiding under
our canoe
from blackflies

(Joe Lake portage)


water clear
by our campsite
no drowned faces


scrawled haiku
on the walls
of camp outhouse
 

new Tom Thomson poem from Martin Durkin

Hi Chris

Happy Fall. Been trying to jump back on the horse with some new work. My mind seems to be throwing darts at different genres or style. Below are 3 that seem to be more in the classic sense of where my mind goes....The other stuff.....not sure yet.

Hope yer ready for Winter - we certainly are not up here........

 

Thomson Lore via 11-66-Ragged Ass

He’s almost a displaced Yukon ghost
McGee and McGrew lore
resting on an island by fire light
but not in the ground where people say.

Cover the earth before the earth Covers you

He’s almost a Robert Johnson
starts out cringeworthy
returns as the star of the genre
where did he go? What was promised to the devil?

Put it in the Glass – not the toe – not the past – Put it in the glass

As the sun sets over the Gateway
Algonquin is lower down
the Yukon is further around
and the South
is not the South below the fold of
Ontario.

Before the Earth covers you – mythology is already tapping you on the shoulder

I hear the lapping of the water on smooth rolled out stone
stretched out here while you sit across and neither smile nor scowl
until I hear you – this is where I stay
and those in heaven or still above – wonder where I went…..



Martin Durkin






Tom Thomson tying a lure in Algonquin Park
from Wikipedia

 

*Thomson lore: Tom Thomson was part of the Group of Seven a legendary group of Canadian painters. When Thomson first started out it was said his work was very poor. His work is now legendary. Upon his death or murder(?) His body was guarded by a group of men until it was transported off a small island in Algonquin Park. It is unknown where is body is actually buried.

*McGee and McGrew: Famous poem by Robert Service called ‘Cremation of Sam McGee’. Set in the Yukon

*Robert Johnson: Famous blues guitarist. His playing was noted as cringeworthy. Johnson disappeared and came back months later and became regarded as the greatest blues guitarist of all time. It was rumoured he sold his soul to the devil on route 66. In actuality he met up with another guitarist and received lessons…..possibly inside a graveyard where they would not be disturbed.

*11-66-Ragged Ass: Hwy 11 famous Ontario hwy which takes you to Alonguin Park via North Bay – the Gateway to the North. Route 66 – the hwy where legend says Johnson sold his soul to the devil. Ragged Ass Road – famous road in the North West Territories

*Below the fold: Paper maps generally show all of Southern Ontario on one full side you need to fold the paper map down to see the rest of Northern Ontario on the opposite side. It is generally believed that North of Toronto nothing of interest occurs ‘below the fold’.

*Not the Toe: In a bar in the Yukon there is a cocktail which has a toe in the bottom of the glass. Visitors are encouraged to drink the cocktail without swallowing the toe. The toe has its own story.




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Hi Martin,

On this election day, when all of Canada seems engaged in a huge squabble, your Tom Thomson poem brightened my morning  :  )

I'll try to send a longer email later, but I felt I had to immediately post your poem. Now I'm going for a long walk to further clear my head before voting (Green).

Hope it's OK to post this?

http://riffsandripplesfromzenrivergardens.blogspot.com/

Haven't even read the other 2 poems yet.

peace & poetry power!
Chris