Tom Thomson's Last Spring

I decided not to start another but to continue my canvas from before Christmas. It was still on the easel. I thought it was finished but when I studied it again in the morning, it needed more work.

As Elizabeth had warned me, my vegetables and potatoes did freeze. I had fashioned a root cellar in the wood shed but I didn’t dig it deep enough for this cold weather. Not all was lost, a good portion underneath didn’t freeze, but if this cold keeps up I will have to transfer the whole lot inside. I’ll make a stew from the ones that froze and no one will ever know the difference.

I took the train back to Toronto today. Father wanted me to stay a few days longer but I said I need to get back. I could have stayed as I’m not on a company time card, but I did not want to have Father’s disappointing gaze lingering on my any longer. To be sure, he loves me, but he is insistent that I consider joining the War Effort. I told him in no short order, that after Somme, if he wanted to lose another son before the year was out, my going overseas would be the best. I could see my Mother wringing her hands in the kitchen as we spoke. She did not want to lose another son. One was already enough.

I arrived at Union Station in the early evening. Recruiters were everywhere. A marching band with signs ‘Free trip to Europe’. Outside there was a streetcar where you could step right in and sign your life away. I walked up Yonge Street. It’s about 2 miles to the shack on Severn. I could have taken the street car but after being on the train I wanted to be away from people. At night I like to walk and look at the stars. With more electric bulbs it’s harder and harder to make
out the stars. The clouds from the coal fires make it hard to see the night sky too.

When I arrived the door to the Shack and the wood shed were frozen shut. The snow had drifted against the wall, melted, then frozen again. I managed to get the wood shed door open and used a old miner’s pick to chip away the ice. Inside, all was as I had left it, except everything was frozen solid. I set the stove alight and now near midnight most of the chill is gone. I don’t mind the chill so long as I have a good cover on me when I sleep. Tomorrow, I plan to start another canvas. I’m not sure which, but I plan to sort through my boards to find something that will catch my eye for painting.

I was still struggling from the change of colour of the country to the grayness of the city. The summer of 1916 was a glorious time. I spent a lot of time canoeing with Ed Godin, “Ned” as I often would call him. We discussed many things ranging from the War and where to find the best pipe tobacco.  Even though we were alone for weeks and remote within the Park,  the shadow of the War still loomed large. But despite the shadows I did some of my brightest and best boards of my career.

During August and September Ed and I travelled by canoe down the Petawawa River and to Lake Travers. After sketching very little during the summer, I sketched a lot during this trip. Mostly in the early morning when the light was good and before we would begin to break camp. The evenings had good light too, but often I was too tired by the end of the day.  Up North, the fall colours would start subtly but earnestly. The leaves of summer were still green but lacked the vitality of the earlier months. As the leaves began to turn, the light of the early morning or early evening offered a new menu of colours each day. The sun becoming lower in the sky brought different angles of light bringing, as I would say to Ed, two magic moments each day: one in the morning and one in the evening. I tried to work our daily routine around these ‘magic moments’. Ed would smile when I was preoccupied with getting out my sketch box to catch the magic moment and he would tell me we had the whole night to set up camp and the whole day to get going.

1916 proved to be a dismal year for all of us. With no signs of the Great War abating, nothing worse could happen than Parliament Hill burning down, which it did on February 3, 1916. The after effect was most demoralizing when we heard that the National Gallery was decimated. Its space was taken over by Parliament and its budget taken away.

But the events of Parliament Hill burning down and the National Gallery passing out of existence was nothing compared to the reaction we received at the OSA Spring Exhibition of 1916. The Toronto art-going public, it seemed, were ill-prepared for any colour of paint other than brown. And others were shocked at the lack of cows and windmills.

The reaction by the critics hit us all hard. In the newspapers, there was even a direct strike at me, but  I secretly relished the critic’s comment that my “fearless use of violent colour which can be scarcely called pleasing” hit the mark. I was not out to please anyone and my resolve began to galvanize that I would never again participate in the OSA exhibition. The French artists had fled the Salon years ago, I could do the same.

And thus ended my Toronto Spring of 1916. In early spring, I left to go up North, and began to reflect on whether I would ever return to the gray city that so-much loved the colour brown.

I like Jim. I feel sorry for him too. He’s been having a hard time of it lately. Ever since last year’s exhibition, he’s been branded a radical. ‘Tangled Garden’ as Jim titled his painting was the target of the critics.

For reasons, beyond the understanding of all of us artists, the critics seized on his painting like a robin on a worm. Jim had the temerity to paint something different than what the critics expected and he wasn’t to be forgiven for it.

The words of the Toronto Daily Star, “Rough, splashy, meaningless , blatant, plastering and massing of unpleasant colours which seems to be a necessary evil in all Canadian art exhibitions nowadays” What do they know?

Hector Charlesworth is another. He says that a painting should be more than a shout.

“Oscar Wilde”, Charlesworth opined, “that Nature constantly imitates art. If what we have seen at the OSA Exhibition is nature, then we will all have to wear smoked glasses to appreciate the true meaning”

Thankfully, “Heck” as we now call him, neglected to comment on my paintings. If he had done so, I would have stolen his Psalter Hymnal and run an entire palette through its pages.

I really don’t know where to begin. I’ll start in the Summer of 1914. Even though I liked to have a chum with me, I liked being alone better. After my canoe trip with Arthur Lismer in May, he returned to Toronto. I stayed for the rest of the summer. I no longer had to worry about work, money or domestic obligations becasue of the stipend I was receiving from Dr. MacCallum. A canoe adventure was in my cards.

I took the train west from Algonquin to Parry Sound. This was the westernmost reach of the J.R. Booth realm. Parry Sound was the terminus of the Ottawa-Arnprior-Algonquin rail line and as many tourists would descend from Ottawa as there would be from Toronto. Parry Sound was a busy little town; I tried to avoid all of the hubbub but it was difficult. I would try to get as far away from the town and sit on the rocks that would jut into Georgian Bay. I was fascinated by the raw power that could be unleashed by a storn. One day the Bay would be a serene blue-green sheet of calm and the next day it would be a wrathful cauldron of grey. I recall the poems of Wilfred Campbell, Lake Lyrics.

My winter months with Jackson were really starting to pay off. That was apparent in the expression of Dr. MacCallum’s eyes when I showed him the sketches I just did. After Parry Sound, I traveled north by steamship and camped with the Dr. at the mouth of the French River. I showed him my sketches and his remark was, “Tom, these are good! They do capture the same feeling when I’m around here.”
Jackson warned me that the Dr. knew very little about art and to be careful and how I should receive his criticism. “Just remember, the Dr. is paying the bills.”

My inclination was to disagree with Jackson. The Dr. might not know about techniques and mechanics or art but he seemed to know what was good to express the northlands. He had the eye of an artist, not necessarily the hands of one.

I accepted the invitation to stay at the Dr.’s cottage on West Wind Island. I stayed for June and July and spent time canoeing and painting with leisure. I had no duties or obligations, only that I would provide the occasional painting lesson to the Dr.’s daughter, Helen.
I enjoyed the time on the island, but the company began to wear on me after awhile. The nature was great, the company wasn’t. Many of the folks vacationing on the island were a plain annoyance. I just wanted to escape from the cake and ice-water socials and find a place to paint in isolation. Despite wanting to be alone, I missed the company of Jackson, Lismer and Harris. Unlike the present company, we could all shut up and paint when the time came. I wrote a letter to Varley asking him to come for a canoe and camping trip but his domestic obligations kept him at home.

Then it hit. The declaration of War, on August 5th, 1914. It was on the same day I was about to depart to Algonquin. It was the day before by 37th birthday. Everyone greeted the declaration of war with great enthusiasm. No one needed reminding that it was actually Great Britain that declared war and the Canada’s decision simply followed suit. I decided I need to get out alone and fast.

I took the steamer from Go Home Bay to the mouth of the French River and managed to purchase an cheap canoe. I canoed east on the French River to Lake Nipissing. At time the river and rapids and treacherous. At one rapids I counted thirteen white wooden crosses – thirteen deaths and probably many more.