PunBB

The Tom Thomson mystery
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Sep 20, 2007 04:30 AM
Shauna Rempel
Toronto Star

Name: Gregory Klages

Age: 37

Program: Year six of a PhD in York/Ryerson joint graduate program in communication and culture

Project: Death on a Painted Lake: The Tom Thomson Tragedy, part of the Great Unsolved Mysteries in Canadian History initiative.

The mystery: Ninety years after Canadian landscape painter Tom Thomson disappeared at Canoe Lake in Algonquin Park on July 8, 1917, people are still trying to piece together the circumstances of his death. Klages is one of them.

"The Thomson mystery had been something in the back of my mind as an interesting episode in Canadian history," says the York University student. The lure is the unsolved, untimely death of a colourful figure – Thomson kept painting instead of participating in World War I and he was known to enjoy a drink.

The evidence: Using documents such as Thomson's correspondence with friends, artists and patrons, along with newspaper reports and information about Algonquin Park at the time, Klages plans to enlist students to help him uncover more about the painter's demise.

The plot thickens: In the 1950s, a group of investigators dug up a body where Thomson had been buried at Canoe Lake. But Thomson's body had reportedly been exhumed shortly after his death and buried elsewhere.

Police concluded the body was not that of Thomson, but the question remains: Who was buried in Thomson's grave?

The goal: Klages isn't necessarily hoping that students will solve the case or Thomson's death – or the case of the mystery body. "It's more about learning something about the process of historical research," Klages says.

Students draw their own conclusions about the documents, then compare their findings to theories already held by historians and other experts.

The mystique: While it might be a stretch to compare Thomson to Marilyn Monroe or Elvis Presley, Thomson is sufficiently ingrained in Canadian pop culture to spark interest in his untimely death decade after decade. Thomson was revered as a pioneering artist in his day, who, along with the later Group of Seven, was instrumental in developing a "Canadian" style of art. Exhibitions of his work are still big news, Klages points out.

Plus, the Tragically Hip wrote the song "Three Pistols" about him.

The big picture: The Thomson case is one of three new case studies that will be added this spring to the Great Unsolved Mysteries in Canadian History project, an international award-winning teaching tool used in as many as 2,000 classrooms in 24 countries.

Deep Thoughts is a look at research going on around the GTA.

Canadian history is cool. :thumb:

Tom Thomson's in the news again.

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Tom Thomson Mystery Reviewed

Joanna Smith
Staff Reporter

The black flies and mosquitoes were so thick he gave up on sketching and set out to go fishing alone one Sunday in Algonquin Park.

Tom Thomson's canoe was found floating upside down a few hours later.

His bloated body surfaced in Canoe Lake the next week – shrouded in a mystery still not laid to rest more than 90 years later.

How did the famous Toronto painter die on July 8, 1917: was it by accident, suicide or murder?

Who found his body?

Where are his remains buried?

These questions are explored in one of three new sections of Great Unsolved Mysteries in Canadian History, an educational website launched by the University of Victoria in 1997.

"It, for me, was just a compelling story," said project research director Gregory Klages, a graduate student in the joint communication and culture program at York and Ryerson Universities.

"It had all the great makings of a great mystery: a suspicious death, accusations of murder, suicide, accidental death, a question about where Thomson's body was buried.

"There just seemed to be so many questions."

Visitors to the site – called Death on a Painted Lake: the Tom Thomson Tragedy – are encouraged to tackle these questions themselves by combing through primary sources such as letters, journal entries and newspaper reports and draw their own conclusions about his life and death.

They will explore a young country grappling with its first great war and a landscape marred by the logging industry.

They will meet a cast of characters including his family, park residents turned murder suspects long after the fact, fellow artists like Group of Seven founder A.Y. Jackson and the various people – including journalist Roy MacGregor – who have investigated the story of his death.

"Growing up in a rural high school, we didn't have the opportunity to go to museums, to go to art galleries, to handle these primary documents," said Klages.

"Something like this site would have been tremendously useful.

"It's to allow students, on the one hand, to get access to the primary documents, to learn how to handle them [by] themselves responsibly as historians, as critical thinkers, and also by handling these primary documents, to make some decisions for themselves about what might have happened," he said, adding they will be learning about Canadian history and art as they go along.

The site also offers contemporary interpretations of the evidence, including a report by Chief Forensic Pathologist of Ontario Michael Pollanen.

Pollanen concluded the coroner at the time – who never examined the body – was wrong to agree with a doctor's opinion that the cause of Thomson's death was accidental drowning.