tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9785591616760913332024-03-04T20:16:10.980-08:00Many Deaths of Tom ThomsonGregory Klages investigates the theories surrounding the 1917 death of Canadian painter Tom Thomson.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger61125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-978559161676091333.post-45133805966807933082019-04-16T07:42:00.003-07:002019-04-16T07:42:48.500-07:00April 17, 2019 - Marina del Rey Book Club, TorontoI'm pleased to be speaking about "The Many Deaths of Tom Thomson" at Toronto's Marina Del Rey Residences Book Club. The club is associated with the Humber Bay branch of the Toronto Public Library.<br />
<br />
Wed., April 17, 6:30 p.m.<br />
http://www.theresidencesofmarinadelrey.ca/ <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-978559161676091333.post-60493674056832117602019-01-31T07:44:00.000-08:002019-04-16T07:45:05.880-07:00Feb. 6, 2019 - Swansea Historical SocietyI'm pleased to be speaking about "The Many Deaths of Tom Thomson" at the Swansea Historical Society, Wed., Feb. 6 at 7:30 p.m.<br />
<br />
http://swanseahistoricalsociety.ca/Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-978559161676091333.post-13312675801260291122018-11-08T07:50:00.000-08:002019-04-16T07:50:55.580-07:00Gregory Klages featured on CBC "Ideas" program about Tom ThomsonGregory Klages, author of "The Many Deaths of Tom Thomson" is featured in a new 1-hour radio documentary exploring sense-making about the Canadian painter, Tom Thomson. The program first aired on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in November 2018.<br />
<br />
You can listen here:<br />
https://www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/tom-thomson-100-years-from-now-1.4899152<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-978559161676091333.post-48244779717571930252018-11-01T07:46:00.000-07:002019-04-16T07:47:08.795-07:00Nov. 15, 2018 - Talk at the Royal City Men's Club, GuelphI'm pleased to be speaking about "The Many Deaths of Tom Thomson" at the Royal City Men's Club, Guelph, ON on November 15, 2018.<br />
<br />
https://www.royalcitymensclub.ca/ <br />
<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-978559161676091333.post-18313382780997647272018-08-09T07:45:00.001-07:002018-08-09T07:45:37.709-07:00In-depth interview on "Toronto Mike'd" podcast<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3z_CkV6h-U0khD9S5Av_XEIBnhrmPtDSAcuxrSZIjUmTHOwRkEQC7SlRcGnISeTG_-WMSK6ZvgBTvCoaTj5FV7LiZ5MKaNCjQoQakBOA15jO4o7x1lE61bMEr5xxC1cBbWuTmMrfePEE/s1600/header.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="86" data-original-width="175" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3z_CkV6h-U0khD9S5Av_XEIBnhrmPtDSAcuxrSZIjUmTHOwRkEQC7SlRcGnISeTG_-WMSK6ZvgBTvCoaTj5FV7LiZ5MKaNCjQoQakBOA15jO4o7x1lE61bMEr5xxC1cBbWuTmMrfePEE/s1600/header.png" /></a></div>
In August (2018), podcaster Toronto Mike and I sat down to spend some time discussing some of the many popular myths, errors, and gossip that have muddled talk about painter Tom Thomson's death. <br /><br />
Topics touched on include:<br />
- the 'fishing line' story,<br />
- the 'fight' story,<br />
- the birth of the murder theory, and<br />
- tales of Thomson having been in a relationship with Winnifred Trainor.<br />
<br />
You can listen here: <a href="http://www.torontomike.com/2018/08/toronto_miked_podcast_episode_364.html">http://www.torontomike.com/2018/08/toronto_miked_podcast_episode_364.html</a> <br />
<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-978559161676091333.post-55344112660400484002018-07-01T12:16:00.000-07:002018-07-01T12:16:04.673-07:00In-depth interview on 'Murder Was The Case' Podcast<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlp0BTQSYO5ncnZNv7IRcSGLOY-synQommI4oeT21b73sErWX83jlC_FqNHN61YZ1RWP4QzIEEym3gCyBqYDrB_p1uBWtk1dovI2iBY93uNBMadaKkCzSEgVFPkMqeBsyG5X54LqpEPyc/s1600/DhBsbWSXkAAQwJF.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="537" data-original-width="790" height="217" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlp0BTQSYO5ncnZNv7IRcSGLOY-synQommI4oeT21b73sErWX83jlC_FqNHN61YZ1RWP4QzIEEym3gCyBqYDrB_p1uBWtk1dovI2iBY93uNBMadaKkCzSEgVFPkMqeBsyG5X54LqpEPyc/s320/DhBsbWSXkAAQwJF.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<b>Murder Was the Case: Episode #34:</b><br />
'The Art of Dying, Interestingly...'<br />
With <a class="twitter-atreply pretty-link js-nav" data-mentioned-user-id="2905173013" dir="ltr" href="https://twitter.com/GregoryKlages" target="_blank"><s>@</s><b>GregoryKlages</b></a>, historian & author of 'The Many Deaths of Tom Thomson.' <br />
<br />
PodBean: <a class="twitter-timeline-link" data-expanded-url="http://bit.ly/mwtcTomThomson" dir="ltr" href="https://t.co/FGygrkVGMU" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank" title="http://bit.ly/mwtcTomThomson"><span class="tco-ellipsis"></span><span class="invisible">http://</span><span class="js-display-url">bit.ly/mwtcTomThomson</span><span class="invisible"></span><span class="tco-ellipsis"><span class="invisible"> </span></span></a><br />
iTunes: <a class="twitter-timeline-link" data-expanded-url="http://bit.ly/itunesmwtc" dir="ltr" href="https://t.co/kf8wgXMQGJ" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank" title="http://bit.ly/itunesmwtc"><span class="tco-ellipsis"></span><span class="invisible">http://</span><span class="js-display-url">bit.ly/itunesmwtc</span></a><br />
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-978559161676091333.post-37440367442521415962018-03-08T09:22:00.000-08:002018-03-08T09:59:19.688-08:00How did David Silcox get Tom Thomson's death so wrong?<style>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7Z7t02I9pEemWcBGWJ7UH8Hg2hrhKiJLXQRiqDhhBgSAFr5pVyOuCYUJF8Fk2vMteXAHNrWlVlbhW83k7kjAEJy8sxuu7hzQPX0LHcfY5sDwQfQLi-utcWBV2cg4lcSi-4teICl0WIfo/s1600/y648.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="648" data-original-width="795" height="260" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7Z7t02I9pEemWcBGWJ7UH8Hg2hrhKiJLXQRiqDhhBgSAFr5pVyOuCYUJF8Fk2vMteXAHNrWlVlbhW83k7kjAEJy8sxuu7hzQPX0LHcfY5sDwQfQLi-utcWBV2cg4lcSi-4teICl0WIfo/s320/y648.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">The Errors and the
Flaws: </b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">How did David Silcox
get Tom Thomson’s death so wrong?</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In 2017, HarperCollins released a thirtieth anniversary revised
edition of David Silcox and Harold Town’s <a href="http://www.harpercollins.ca/9781443442343/tom-thomson" target="_blank"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Tom Thomson: The Silence and the Storm</i></a>. The book offers an abundance of
attractive reproductions of Thomson’s art. The text, however, suffers from
disappointing and surprising <b><span style="color: red;">factual</span></b> <b><span style="color: red;">errors about Tom Thomson's death.</span> </b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In the 1970s, Silcox (art critic and former Canada Council Arts Officer), and abstract painter Harold Town collaborated on the book, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Tom Thomson:</i> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Silence and the Storm</i>. The work valourized Thomson, describing him
as an inventor, innovator, and possible precursor of Canadian abstract
painting. The book also rejected recent conspiracy theories about Thomson’s
death, such as proposals Thomson had been murdered or committed suicide. In <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Silence & the Storm</i>, Silcox and
Town indicated support for the official cause of death listed in 1917, that Thomson
had died by accident. Silcox and Town offered that Thomson had fallen out of his
canoe due to a sprained ankle. This theory had only been offered publicly once
before, but seemed to explain a facet of the story depended on by murder
theorists - that Thomson’s body was found with fishing line wrapped around one
ankle (the fishing line worked as an ankle splint or brace, Silcox & Town
claimed). </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As Town die<span style="background-color: white;">d in <span style="background-attachment: scroll; background-clip: border-box; background-image: none; background-origin: padding-box; background-position: 0% 0%; background-repeat: repeat; background-size: auto auto;">1990</span>, </span>Silcox edited the 2017 volume. Silcox repeats the ‘sprained
ankle’ claim in his 2002 book, <i>Tom Thomson: An Introduction to His Life and Art</i>, and again
in the 2017 republication of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Silence
and The Storm</i>. In the recent work, however, he attempts to buttress his
claim with what might appear to the casual reader as convincing evidence. On
pg. 49, he states: </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“[Thomson’s] feet weren’t tangled in wire, as has been
repeatedly suggested, because [Mark] Robinson noted at the time the body was
recovered that Thomson had carefully bound copper fishing line around a
sprained ankle to give it support." </blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="color: red;">This sentence offers two easily demonstrated errors about the
facts of Thomson’s death.</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<h3 class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">1) In 1917, Mark Robinson did not record fishing line on Thomson’s corpse. </b></h3>
<h3>
</h3>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Mark Robinson, the eyewitness Silcox refers to in the quote
above, was the Algonquin Park Ranger who led the search for Thomson, and who on
17 July 1917 was one of two persons who made notes about the condition in which Thomson’s corpse was
found. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="color: red;">Robinson’s notes make no mention about Thomson’s corpse
having fishing line around one ankle</span></b> (see <a href="http://www.canadianmysteries.ca/sites/thomson/tragedy/discovery/5545en.html" target="_blank">his diary entry <span style="background-color: white;"><span style="background-attachment: scroll; background-clip: border-box; background-image: none; background-origin: padding-box; background-position: 0% 0%; background-repeat: repeat; background-size: auto auto;">here</span></span></a>, on the website I
helped produce in 2008, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Death On A
Painted Lake: The Tom Thomson Tragedy</i>). </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As I’ve explored at length in
<a href="http://manydeathsoftomthomson.blogspot.ca/2017/09/tom-thomson-death-myth-10-fishing-line.html" target="_blank">another post</a>, Robinson first introduced his ‘fishing line’ tale in the
1930s, and expanded on it in the 1950s. As testimony, it is untrustworthy; it
is uncorroborated by observations from any other observer (including the doctor who examined Thomson's corpse on 17 July 1917), and was first
mentioned over a decade after the events in question (not to mention that
Robinson changed the details between his 1930s and 1950s accounts).
Additionally, if anywhere near true, the presence of fishing line around
Thomson’s leg can easily be explained as the line that was used to drag
Thomson’s corpse to shore.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<h3 class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> </b></h3>
<h3 class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">2) Mark Robinson
<i>never</i> mentioned anything about Thomson having an ankle sprain.</b></h3>
<h3>
</h3>
<div class="MsoNormal">
For anyone familiar with Robinson’s diary entries from July
1917, or the other accounts that Robinson produced in the 1930s and 1950s, Silcox’s
claim about Thomson having a sprained ankle is incomprehensible. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Not only did Mark Robinson not record any mention of fishing
line in 1917, <b><span style="color: red;">he <span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">never</span> – <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">not once, in the multiple accounts he
produced over 35 years</i> – mentioned Thomson having a sprained ankle</span></b>. <b><u>The
claim is simply not true</u></b>. (Read some of his post-1917 accounts <span style="background-color: white;"><span style="background-attachment: scroll; background-clip: border-box; background-image: none; background-origin: padding-box; background-position: 0% 0%; background-repeat: repeat; background-size: auto auto;"><a href="http://www.canadianmysteries.ca/sites/thomson/investigations/1918-1932/indexen.html" target="_blank">here</a> and <a href="http://www.canadianmysteries.ca/sites/thomson/investigations/1950-1965/indexen.html" target="_blank">here</a></span></span>, on the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Death On A Painted Lake: The Tom Thomson
Tragedy </i>website.)</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<h3 class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> </b></h3>
<h3 class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Where did the sprained
ankle story come from, if not Mark Robinson in 1917?</b></h3>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
As I detail in <span style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Chapter 8 of </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Many Deaths of Tom Thomson</i>, Silcox and Town’s original statement about
the sprained ankle was based on testimony offered long after Thomson’s death. <b><span style="color: red;">The
first record we have of the ‘sprained ankle’ story appeared <i>in 1969</i>, not 1917.</span></b> It was
then that Tom Thomson’s nephew, George Jr., suggested to an Owen Sound
newspaper a claim he said he had heard from his father; George Sr. had been told (not witnessed) that Tom had a sprained
ankle in 1917. George Sr. never mentioned this claim in any surviving documents he
produced (such as letters to researcher Blodwen Davies), and no one else –
including eyewitnesses to Thomson’s last days – ever produced any corroborating
claim. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In 1973, Elva Henry, another relative of Tom’s, repeated
George Jr.’s sprained ankle claim to a researcher working for Silcox and Town (<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="background-attachment: scroll; background-clip: border-box; background-image: none; background-origin: padding-box; background-position: 0% 0%; background-repeat: repeat; background-size: auto auto;">see excerpts from the <a href="http://www.canadianmysteries.ca/sites/thomson/investigations/1966-1978/5048en.html" target="_blank">interview notes here</a></span></span>,
on the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Death On A Painted Lake: The Tom
Thomson Tragedy </i>site). </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In 1977, Silcox and Town offer the sprained ankle story as the
most likely explanation for Thomson’s death, but don’t identify on what basis they arrived at this conclusion. Given that the story had only surfaced in the preceding decade, without any corroborating primary sources or witness accounts, their silence about the
source of the story makes sense.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<h3 class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> </b></h3>
<h3 class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">How could Silcox get
it so wrong in 2017?</b></h3>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<b><span style="color: red;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: black;">Silcox’s 2017 claim clearly shows a lack of attention to the
evidence about Thomson’s death, and introduces two more errors</span><i> </i><span style="color: black;">into
narratives of Tom Thomson’s demise.</span></span></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
How, in the process of editing<span style="background-color: white;"></span> <i>The Silence and The Storm</i> for republication,
David Silcox could choose to offer new claims about Thomson’s death without at
least checking them against easily available evidence (or even other secondary
accounts) is baffling. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
For instance, Robinson’s diary entries are no secret. They
were published in Ottelyn Addison’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Tom
Thomson: The Algonquin Years </i>(1969). They were repeated in William Little’s
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Tom Thomson Mystery </i>(1970). In
2008, <a href="http://www.canadianmysteries.ca/sites/thomson/tragedy/discovery/indexen.html" target="_blank">photographs and transcriptions of the diary entry in question</a> were
published on the website <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Death On A
Painted Lake: The Tom Thomson Tragedy</i>. Similarly, some of Robinson’s later
accounts were published by Little. They also appeared in the voluminous Art
Gallery of Ontario/National Gallery of Canada <i>Tom Thomson</i> exhibition catalogue
(2002), as well as on the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Death On A
Painted Lake</i> site.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Although republication of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Silence and The Storm</i> was likely intended to establish the book
as a paragon of Canadian art historical writing, the revised edition undermines the credibility of the work. It is a visually attractive book, no doubt. That Silcox could
misrepresent the facts of Thomson’s death so wildly certainly diminishes the
impression that the visually attractive republication might otherwise make.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11pt;"><b style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11pt;">Gregory Klages - </span></b><b style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11pt;"><b style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11pt;">© 2018</span></b></span></b></span></b><br />
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<span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "gill sans mt" , sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt;"><b><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "gill sans mt" , sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt;">P<span style="font-family: "gill sans mt" , sans-serif;">er<span style="font-family: "gill sans mt" , sans-serif;">plexed? Challenged? Interested in reading more?</span></span></span></b></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "gill sans mt" , sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "gill sans mt" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "gill sans mt" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "gill sans mt" , sans-serif;">To read more <span style="font-family: "gill sans mt" , sans-serif;">evidence about Tom Thomson'<span style="font-family: "gill sans mt" , sans-serif;">s d<span style="font-family: "gill sans mt" , sans-serif;">eath, and to learn how story-telling about Thomson's death has diver<span style="font-family: "gill sans mt" , sans-serif;">ged further and further from the evidence, read </span></span></span></span></span><a href="https://www.dundurn.com/books/Many-Deaths-Tom-Thomson"><i>The Many Deaths of Tom Thomson: Separating Fact from Fiction</i></a> (Dundurn Press, 2016). </span></span></span><br />
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<span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "gill sans mt" , sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "gill sans mt" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "gill sans mt" , sans-serif;">Gregory K<span style="font-family: "gill sans mt" , sans-serif;">lages was Research <span style="font-family: "gill sans mt" , sans-serif;">Director <span style="font-family: "gill sans mt" , sans-serif;">for <a href="http://www.canadianmysteries.ca/sites/thomson/home/indexen.html" target="_blank"><i>Death On A Painted Lake: The Tom Thomson T</i></a><span style="font-family: "gill sans mt" , sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.canadianmysteries.ca/sites/thomson/home/indexen.html" target="_blank"><i>ragedy</i></a><span style="font-family: "gill sans mt" , sans-serif;">, part of the international<span style="font-family: "gill sans mt" , sans-serif;"> award-winning Great Unsolved Myster<span style="font-family: "gill sans mt" , sans-serif;">ies in Canadian History project.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span> </span></span> </span><br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-978559161676091333.post-20191189725794602382018-02-23T11:06:00.000-08:002018-02-28T10:46:42.222-08:00Tom Thomson Death Myth #6 - 'Tom Thomson: killed by a German sympathizer'<style>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhpp6W_QoCWx1-D1ZOE9WrTGUJ9_Hp6UJ5LGCSrXdP4mp_HwbVlmajUIzjRqa4tHj7tRd44C1QQE022WbYalKGz47wJ7xSNCjj6vcp2E6q0ej7DDWWvPRMi2x_Jc-pNCg3DFIUFI5tcPM/s1600/Myths+and+Errors+logo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="271" data-original-width="541" height="160" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhpp6W_QoCWx1-D1ZOE9WrTGUJ9_Hp6UJ5LGCSrXdP4mp_HwbVlmajUIzjRqa4tHj7tRd44C1QQE022WbYalKGz47wJ7xSNCjj6vcp2E6q0ej7DDWWvPRMi2x_Jc-pNCg3DFIUFI5tcPM/s320/Myths+and+Errors+logo.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.0pt;">One of the more fantastical rumours regarding Tom
Thomson’s death is that he was killed in a fight over the war that had been raging in Europe. These
stories hinge on the idea that Tom Thomson, lover of nature, nationalist, &
good-humoured prankster – <i>the model Canadian man</i> – was killed by a rude German-American
who sympathized with the ‘Huns’. Smacking of period propaganda and stereotypes,
these stories wildly misrepresent the facts.</span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.0pt;">In
1917, <span style="color: red;">no one suggested that a foreigner murdered Tom Thomson</span>, or even <span style="color: red;">that he
had gotten in a fight over the war</span>.</span></b><span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.0pt;"> </span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.0pt;">So where does this story originate?</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.0pt;">The closest contemporary (1917) documents come to
suggesting a German sympathizer was skulking around Canoe Lake is a notation in
the daily diary of Mark Robinson. In May 1917, Robinson wrote, “<a href="http://www.canadianmysteries.ca/sites/thomson/archives/diaryjournalreminiscence/5761en.html" target="_blank">I am of the opinion that [Martin Blecher Jr. ] is a German spy</a>.” Robinson, it might be
recalled, was the Algonquin Park Ranger responsible for the Canoe Lake area
where Thomson was staying in the spring and summer of 1917. </span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.0pt;">What
were Blecher’s ties to Germany?</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.0pt;">Before looking at some facts of Blecher’s life, it
might be useful to contextualize Robinson’s comment. From November 1915 through
March 1917, he had been serving with the Canadian Expeditionary Force. Robinson
had only returned to duties as a Park Ranger in April 1917, a few weeks before
writing his comment about Blecher Jr., and three months after having returned
from European military service. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.0pt;">What can we make of Robinson’s suspicions? As Mary
Garland has established, Martin Blecher Jr.’s closest tie to Germany was through
his German-born grandfather, Henry Blecher, who died thirty years before Martin
was born. Martin Jr. was born a US citizen, as was his father. Both were
life-long residents of Buffalo, New York. Nonetheless, Mark Robinson’s
identification of Blecher with Germany would persist. In 1930, he would
describe Blecher Jr. as an “<a href="http://www.canadianmysteries.ca/sites/thomson/archives/privateletter/5023en.html" target="_blank">American German tourist</a>.” </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.0pt;">Where did this sentiment come from? In 1910, Robinson
had asked Blecher Jr.’s father to stop flying the US flag on his Canoe Lake
cottage, a request with which the man complied. Could this have planted a seed
of hostility towards the Blecher family? Alternatively, Robinson may have
overheard Blecher suggesting the Germans could win the war and interpreted this
as sympathy for the German side. We will likely never know what prompted
Robinson’s perceptions. </span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.0pt;">Was
Blecher a ‘draft dodger’?</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.0pt;">Regardless, Robinson’s persistent biases would later
affect how those interested in the Thomson case made sense of things. In 1931, after
corresponding with Robinson, Thomson biographer Blodwen Davies would intimate that
Blecher Jr. was hiding in Canada to avoid being drafted for the US Army. <a href="http://www.canadianmysteries.ca/sites/thomson/archives/miscellaneous/5039en.html" target="_blank">She reported a rumour</a> she heard at Canoe Lake that a representative of the US War Department had actually visited the area to summon Blecher back to the United States! </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.0pt;">The rumour does not make much sense once we know the history of how Blecher was drafted. Blecher Jr. registered for the United States draft in
November 1917, seven months after the US entered the war (and four months after
Thomson’s death). He was not called to service until August 1918. In 1931, <a href="http://www.canadianmysteries.ca/sites/thomson/archives/privateletter/5008en.html" target="_blank">the US War Department would outline Blecher’s draft record</a> to Davies, indicating
that it was correct that he did not report for the draft when called, but that
upon investigation (during the winter of 1917/18) his lack of appearance was deemed ‘nonwilful’. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.0pt;">Despite the assurances of the US War Department to Davies, the rumour that Blecher was a draft dodger (and a German) would continue to circulate, being repeated decades later by commentators such as
William Little, and Roy MacGregor, as well as ‘eyewitness’ Daphne Crombie. </span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.0pt;">Did
Tom and Blecher get in a fight?</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.0pt;">Davies certainly believed that Thomson had been in a
significant fight before his death, and intimated that Blecher was involved. In
her 1931 letter to the Ontario Attorney General, Davies reported that Thomson
had gotten in a fight with an American tourist. Around this time, she likely
inquired whether Tom’s brother, George, had heard anything about a fight when
he had been Canoe Lake during July 1917. George responded that he had heard
that “<a href="http://www.canadianmysteries.ca/sites/thomson/archives/privateletter/4988en.html" target="_blank">there was some ill feeling between Tom and some man in that region</a>”, but
offered no more details. George suggested that he had perhaps heard the story
from one of the Rangers, but “I didn’t at the time attach any serious
importance to the report.” </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.0pt;">Decades later, it was suggested that Blecher and Thomson might have fought not because Blecher was a draft dodger, but because Thomson suggested he was a coward. In 1970, Dr. Noble Sharpe
would suggest that Tom had gotten in a fight after having “<a href="http://www.canadianmysteries.ca/sites/thomson/archives/journalarticle/5066en.html" target="_blank">accused the other man of being a deserter from the American Army</a>."</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.0pt;">Also in 1970, William Little added to the groundless
claims about a fight between Blecher and Thomson. In <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Tom Thomson Mystery</i>,
Little concocted a conversation between the men, writing that
an angry exchange between the two men concluded with Blecher exclaiming, “Stay
out of my way if you know what’s good for you.” This was the first time anyone
had much such a blatant claim, let alone provided the dialogue that took place
between the two men. Nonetheless, Little’s almost surely fictionalized account
has since often been repeated as if it must be fact. </span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.0pt;">Conclusion:</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.0pt;">Suspicions about Martin Blecher Jr. are built upon
misrepresentation and errors. In 2010’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Northern
Light</i>, Roy MacGregor stated that </span><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.0pt;">“almost all versions of the Tom Thomson story”
include the fight. While this is not entirely true, the story has often been
repeated since publication Little’s book. Perhaps most importantly, </span></span><span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.0pt;">Roy
MacGregor certainly gave the Little account credence. In 1973, he would repeat
the comments Little likely imagined Blecher having said. He would repeat the
doubtworthy statements in his 2010 book (although he did not use them to argue
that Blecher killed Thomson).</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.0pt;">These suspicions
regarding Martin Blecher Jr.’s involvement in Tom Thomson’s death may have been,
as Webb has suggested, a product of wartime anti-German sensibilities, as well
as later anti-American sentiments. Aside from errors, gossip and groundless
impressions, though, no evidence indicates Thomson and Blecher had anything
other than occasional neighbourly interactions. Nonetheless, through
repetition, flawed speculation about Martin Blecher Jr. has helped to give the
false impression that the man is a viable suspect in the stories that Tom
Thomson was murdered.</span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.0pt;"><br /></span></b>
<br />
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11pt;"><b style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11pt;">Gregory Klages - </span></b><b style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11pt;"><b style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11pt;">© 2018</span></b></span></b></span></b><br />
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; font-weight: normal;">---</span></span></b><br />
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "gill sans";"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; font-weight: normal;">Gregory Klages was Research Director for the </span><b style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11pt;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; font-weight: normal;">website </span><a href="http://www.canadianmysteries.ca/sites/thomson/home/indexen.html" style="background-color: white; color: purple; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; font-weight: normal;">Death On A Painted Lake: The Tom Thomson Tragedy</a></span></b><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; font-weight: normal;">, launched by the Great Unsolved Mysteries in Canadian History project in 2008. Klages is the author of the 2016 book, </span><a href="https://www.dundurn.com/books/Many-Deaths-Tom-Thomson" style="background-color: white; color: purple; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; font-weight: normal;"><i>The Many Deaths of Tom Thomson: Separating Fact from Fiction</i></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; font-weight: normal;"> (Dundurn Press).</span></span></b></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-978559161676091333.post-12158637571635439332018-02-08T11:27:00.000-08:002018-02-08T11:27:02.539-08:00April 19 - Collingwood Public Library > Author talk & book signing<b><i>Many Deaths of Tom Thomson</i> </b><br />
<b>Author talk & book signing</b><br />
<u>Thursday, April 19, 7:00 p.m.
</u><br />
<br />
<br />
<b><a href="https://www.blogger.com/www.collingwoodpubliclibrary.ca">Collingwood Public Library</a></b><br />
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55 Ste. Marie Street<br />
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705-445-1571Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-978559161676091333.post-78070113956735905232017-11-03T07:05:00.002-07:002017-11-03T07:05:26.672-07:00McMichael Collection of Canadian Art - 18 Nov. - author talk<h2>
<a href="http://mcmichael.com/event/the-many-deaths-of-tom-thomson-separating-facts-from-fiction/" target="_blank"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Author talk at McMichael Collection of Canadian Art<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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L0J 1C0
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For more information:<br />
<a href="http://mcmichael.com/event/the-many-deaths-of-tom-thomson-separating-facts-from-fiction/">http://mcmichael.com/event/the-many-deaths-of-tom-thomson-separating-facts-from-fiction/</a><br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-978559161676091333.post-435873397587807292017-11-03T06:38:00.001-07:002018-02-28T10:46:13.186-08:00Tom Thomson Death myth #7 - 'Tom Thomson: the reluctant father'<style>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9reM7JjSJPTApG28E8PNP08IsNdCKj23XiDqktPVTh1e96XGaOZudQOSv0-bmvfGzwXGmDbKV5EARaYzaZoyDb-fcTRj6uvUTwnos8AIz2K3WYYltt_GLcCsxNdAEOrbSiQHS3_fTnoc/s1600/Myths+and+Errors+logo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="271" data-original-width="541" height="160" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9reM7JjSJPTApG28E8PNP08IsNdCKj23XiDqktPVTh1e96XGaOZudQOSv0-bmvfGzwXGmDbKV5EARaYzaZoyDb-fcTRj6uvUTwnos8AIz2K3WYYltt_GLcCsxNdAEOrbSiQHS3_fTnoc/s320/Myths+and+Errors+logo.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.5pt;">The suggestion that Tom Thomson committed suicide
because he was about to become a father is a relatively recent concoction. Like
a few other flawed stories about Thomson’s death, this one originates with
author Roy MacGregor’s penchant for spinning far-fetched conclusions from slim
evidence.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.5pt;">In <a href="http://manydeathsoftomthomson.blogspot.ca/2017/10/tom-thomson-death-myth-8-reluctant-groom.html" target="_blank"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Tom Thomson Death Myth #8</b></a>, I explored claims that Thomson was engaged in the months
preceding his death. I showed how no records from 1917 indicate, or even
intimate that Tom Thomson was engaged. Of course, Thomson did not need to be
engaged to a woman for her to become pregnant. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.5pt;">When I investigated theories of Tom Thomson’s death, I
was intrigued to discover that the two claims - engagement & pregnancy - developed along quite different
timelines. This feature is critical for understanding flaws
in the pregnancy story.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.5pt;">As I describe in </span><span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.5pt;"><span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.5pt;"><a href="http://manydeathsoftomthomson.blogspot.ca/2017/10/tom-thomson-death-myth-8-reluctant-groom.html" target="_blank"><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Tom Thomson Death Myth #8</span></a>, </span>the engagement story began as gossip in the 1920s. It
first appeared in a written account in 1930, and was offered by a man who knew
Thomson and who lived at Canoe Lake in the summer of 1917. This suggests that the story at least seemed plausible to someone who had known Thomson and who lived in Canoe Lake. <span style="color: red;"><b>Speculation that
Thomson might have impregnated a woman first appeared in 1973. No one who met Thomson or who lived at Canoe Lake in 1917 ever
suggested such a claim. </b></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.5pt;"><b>The story can really be explored as the thinking of one man, Roy
MacGregor, who has advanced and expanded on his theory since 1973.</b></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.5pt;">As with the engagement claim, MacGregor’s story about an
‘illegitimate’ pregnancy is closely associated with Winnifred Trainor.
Trainor’s family lived in Huntsville. Her family leased a cottage at Canoe
Lake, where Thomson was staying from April 1917 until his death. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.5pt;">In his article, “The Great Canoe Lake Mystery”,
published in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Maclean’s</i> magazine in
September 1973, Roy MacGregor breezily introduced the idea that Winnie Trainor
might have been pregnant. He states that Dr. Pocock, Trainor’s physician from
1919 until her death in 1962, had heard rumours that Winnie had been pregnant
by Tom. Pocock rejected them, though.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.5pt;">MacGregor returned to the pregnancy story in 1977. His
article, “The Legend”, printed in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Canadian</i> magazine, referred to Charles Plewman’s 1972 claim that Thomson
committed suicide to avoid Trainor’s insistence on getting married. MacGregor suggested
Trainor was exerting what he called ‘tremendous pressure’. He suggested this
indicated that Winnie was pregnant. He overlooked, of course,
that a woman might press for marriage without being compelled by pregnancy. He also did not seem to consider that Plewman’s account was purely hearsay.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.5pt;">In 1980, MacGregor followed up his 1970s magazine articles with a novel, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Shorelines</i>. The book offers a scenario of
what might have transpired if Trainor had been pregnant by Thomson. It was
republished in 2002 as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Canoe Lake</i>. In
a supplementary statement included in the 2002 version, MacGregor offered a new tidbit of information. He noted that in fall 1917 the Huntsville newspaper’s social pages
included a notation that Winnie Trainor and her mother were leaving to spend the winter in the
United States. He also notes Winnie was not mentioned again
until Easter 1918. Working from these two newspaper notices, MacGregor extrapolates that
Trainor might have left Huntsville to have a child. MacGregor also suggests that his grounds for the story go back to Charles Plewman, who he claims told a Canadian Press reporter in 1973 that Winnie was pregnant with Tom's child.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.5pt;">Finally, in 2010, in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Northern Light: Tom Thomson and the woman who loved him, </i>MacGregor
again advanced his pregnancy theory. In this account, MacGregor repeats his
claim that the only explanation for Winnie leaving Huntsville in the fall of 1917
was that she <i>must</i> have been pregnant. He also includes an interesting disclaimer about Plewman's 1973 claims, noting, <span style="color: red;">"[Plewman] might not have made such actual 'statements', but he certainly had dropped all the necessary hints."</span> (196)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.5pt;"><u><b>Shortcomings in MacGregor's argument: </b></u></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.5pt;">MacGregor’s argument is based on wild extrapolation
from very thin evidence. Discussing the pregnancy story in 2002, he notes, <b><span style="color: red;">“I
have no proof.”</span></b> (pg. 288) The absence of proof, however, does not stop
MacGregor from offering wild speculation. Why might he pursue this line of speculation without evidence?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.5pt;">He is the only person to
have ever suggested that Trainor was pregnant.</span><span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.5pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.5pt;">Trainor lived her later years in Huntsville, where
MacGregor also spent his childhood. </span><span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.5pt;">As MacGregor notes in several of his works, Trainor’s
sister married his uncle. In this regard, MacGregor might have very personal
reasons to portray his distant relative as a central player in the story of Tom
Thomson’s death.</span>
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<span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.5pt;">He has yet, however, to prove that Thomson and Trainor
were anything but mere acquaintances. He has not established that they had a
relationship of any kind, beyond Thomson’s visits to the Trainor family home, and his
claims that Thomson gave the family some art works. Were these gifts meant for Winnie, her
father, or the family in general? We don’t know. Neither, apparently, does
MacGregor (or presumably, he would produce evidence supporting his claims.)</span></div>
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<b><span style="color: red;">
</span></b><br />
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<span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.5pt;"><b><span style="color: red;">What of Winnie’s trip away over the winter of
1917-1918? Should we assume that the only explanation for such a trip is
pregnancy?</span></b> Given what emerged later as Trainor’s emotional attachment to
Thomson, might her family have decided it best to get her away from the
reminders of Thomson for a while? Might she have entered some sort of
sanitarium to receive mental health care? (There are certainly many reports –
from MacGregor included – that her mental health was questioned by many, even
in 1917.) These explanations are just possible as MacGregor’s pregnancy theory. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.0pt;"><u><b>Conclusions</b></u> </span></h4>
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<span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.5pt;">We certainly know that no one who was familiar with any of the central players in Thomson's last days ever suggested an unwanted pregnancy was involved in Thomson's death. </span><span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.5pt;">The challenge the pregnancy
story faces is it seems to have originated more than fifty years after Thomson's tragic accident, and to have only been offered
by one person, who has not provided any convincing evidence to support it. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.5pt;">In
the absence of proof, and with its untrustworthy origins, the pregnancy story
must be regarded as wild, groundless speculation that only serves to further muddy
the facts of Tom Thomson’s death. It certainly doesn't provide any solid support for the suggestion that Tom Thomson committed suicide.</span>
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<br />
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.0pt;"><br /></span></b>
<br />
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11pt;"><b style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11pt;">Gregory Klages - </span></b><b style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11pt;"><b style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11pt;">© 2017</span></b></span></b></span></b><br />
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; font-weight: normal;">---</span></span></b><br />
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "gill sans";"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; font-weight: normal;">Gregory Klages was Research Director for the </span><b style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11pt;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; font-weight: normal;">website </span><a href="http://www.canadianmysteries.ca/sites/thomson/home/indexen.html" style="background-color: white; color: purple; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; font-weight: normal;">Death On A Painted Lake: The Tom Thomson Tragedy</a></span></b><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; font-weight: normal;">, launched by the Great Unsolved Mysteries in Canadian History project in 2008. Klages is the author of the 2016 book, </span><a href="https://www.dundurn.com/books/Many-Deaths-Tom-Thomson" style="background-color: white; color: purple; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; font-weight: normal;"><i>The Many Deaths of Tom Thomson: Separating Fact from Fiction</i></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; font-weight: normal;"> (Dundurn Press).</span></span></b></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-978559161676091333.post-91616404087141415082017-10-16T10:13:00.003-07:002018-02-28T10:46:58.068-08:00Tom Thomson death myth #8 - 'Tom Thomson: the reluctant groom'<style>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAWQTAh78nf_eCg0Tf2XGSbPKorGjztrrVm27qsG_-HozGzooGzcEOwJhXfV1QxztuaBFnUNcKTsqwlyIjIeVQhFIMEgcypvd3IaSuOrF19bH32FuxsveWJb1VRWY_KnlUj3eo-FBBalQ/s1600/Myths+and+Errors+logo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="271" data-original-width="541" height="160" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAWQTAh78nf_eCg0Tf2XGSbPKorGjztrrVm27qsG_-HozGzooGzcEOwJhXfV1QxztuaBFnUNcKTsqwlyIjIeVQhFIMEgcypvd3IaSuOrF19bH32FuxsveWJb1VRWY_KnlUj3eo-FBBalQ/s320/Myths+and+Errors+logo.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.0pt;">During the early 1970s, speculation around Tom
Thomson’s death gained new momentum. William Little’s 1970 book, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Tom Thomson Mystery</i> seemed to
provide strong evidence that Thomson had been murdered. <b>In 1972, a new
publication would turn speculation about Thomson’s death in an entirely
different direction – <span style="color: red;">suicide</span>.</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 14.6667px;">Charles Plewman arrived at Canoe Lake i</span><span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 14.6667px;">n mid-July 1917, </span><span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11pt;">between Thomson’s disappearance and discovery
of his remains. Plewman claims to have acted as a pallbearer at Thomson's Algonquin Park funeral, and to have discussed Thomson's death with many people who lived around Canoe Lake in 1917. In 1972, 55 years after Thomson's demise, Plewman summarized what he learned in an article for the Canadian Camping Association
magazine. While the publication might not have had wide readership, his article certainly
helped provide grist for speculation that Tom Thomson might have committed
suicide.</span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.0pt;">In the <i>Canadian Camping</i> article, Plewman described how he had heard from several people that Tom Thomson was engaged in the summer of 1917.</span></b><span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.0pt;"> His claim echoed gossip that had appeared a few years before, in William Little's <i>The Tom Thomson Tragedy</i>. Plewman, though, derived much different meaning from the gossip than Little. </span><br />
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<h4>
<span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.0pt;"><u><b>William Little's gossip and photos of a married woman</b></u> </span></h4>
<span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.0pt;">Little's 1970 book contained a story he claimed to have heard from A.Y. Jackson. The story was that Tom Thomson might have considered proposing marriage, or might even have been engaged to Winnifred Trainor. </span><span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.0pt;">Trainor's family lived in Huntsville (west of Algonquin Park) and leased a
cottage on Canoe Lake. Little's claim seemed to be supported by photos taken by Thomson, which were rediscovered and published in 1970. Two of these photos showed a woman - identified by a Thomson family member as Trainor - wearing rings on the finger traditionally reserved for matrimonial bands.</span> </span><br />
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<h4>
<u><b><span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.0pt;">Plewman's gossip</span></b></u></h4>
<span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.0pt;">At the outset, we should keep in mind that Charles Plewman never met Tom Thomson. All that he reported about the case is hearsay. In his 1972 article, Plewman stated one of the people who had told him about Thomson's engagement was Shannon Fraser. (Fraser was the operator of
Canoe Lake’s Mowat Lodge, where Thomson was staying during spring & summer
1917.) After the engagement, </span><span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.0pt;">according to Fraser (via Plewman), Thomson got 'cold feet'</span></span>. Trainor, though, was apparently pressing the increasingly hesitant Tom to follow through with matrimony. Plewman related that <span style="color: red;">he had heard Thomson, unable to see a way out of the situation,
tried repeatedly to take his own life</span>. Eventually, it seemed, he was successful.</span></div>
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<h4>
<span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.0pt;"><u><b>Mark Robinson and engagement gossip</b></u> </span></h4>
<span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.0pt;">The idea that Thomson and Trainor might have been
engaged can be traced to Algonquin Park Ranger Mark Robinson. In March 1930,
Robinson told Thomson biographer Blodwen Davies that if she wanted to know
more about Thomson she might speak to Winnie Trainor, “</span><span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.0pt;">to whom it is said Tom was engaged.”
Robinson neglected to mention who was reporting the engagement, but it can be
inferred from his statement that he did not know if it was fact. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.0pt;">Only a few months later, in
September of 1930, Robinson suggested doubts about the gossip, stating to Davies, “I
learned from another friend that [Trainor] assured him she was engaged to Thompson
[sic]. Perhaps so but<span style="color: red;"> I did not see anything to indicate more than ordinary
friendship.</span>” </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.0pt;"><u><b>Trainor's perplexing silence</b></u></span></h4>
<span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.0pt;">If Thomson
and Trainor were engaged, there is no record she raised the topic with anyone
closely connected to Tom. She mentioned nothing of it to Tom’s sister, Margaret,
when they met in late summer 1917. She also mentioned nothing of it in her
letters to the executor of Tom’s estate, his brother-in-law, Tom Harkness. This
is curious, as her letters to Harkness show she was certainly willing to
broach many topics regarding Tom’s life at Canoe Lake, including his finances
and living arrangements. She also didn’t mention anything about it in her
correspondence with Tom’s patron, Dr. James MacCallum. <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">If Tom and Trainor had been engaged, her silence about it in the months
following his death, particularly with these people closely connected to Tom
and to the disposition of his worldly goods, is rather perplexing.</b></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.0pt;">Trainor was
not always silent about the issue, apparently. Robinson gossiped that Trainor had claimed to be engaged to Thomson. In October 1956, Dr. Noble Sharpe was
sent to Canoe Lake to investigate human remains found near Mowat cemetery. Sharpe was </span><span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 14.6667px;">the chief forensic investigator for the Ontario Attorney General’s Laboratory</span><span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 14.6667px;">. </span><span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11pt;">Sharpe recorded that Trainor had told him that she and Tom
had been engaged. He published this assertion in a 1970 article. I explore some
of the significant problems with this report </span><u style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11pt;"><a href="http://manydeathsoftomthomson.blogspot.ca/2017/04/was-winnie-trainor-engaged-to-tom.html" target="_blank">in another post</a>.</u></div>
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<h4>
<span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.0pt;"><u><b>Roy MacGregor's unsupported claim</b></u> </span></h4>
<span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.0pt;">Journalist Roy
MacGregor would repeat Little's and Plewman’s gossip that Trainor and Thomson had
been engaged during the summer of 1917. In a 1973 <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Maclean’s</i> article, MacGregor wrote, “</span><span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.0pt;">Certainly they were
engaged.” Supporting his assertion, MacGregor claimed, “In the spring before he
died, Thomson had even reserved a cabin for a fall honeymoon.” </span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.0pt;">This statement makes 'evidence' out of hearsay. In <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Tom Thomson Mystery, </i>William Little related<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>a rumour he claimed to have heard from A.Y. Jackson. Little's account of Jackson's story was that in early summer 1917
Thomson had booked a late summer honeymoon cabin at a resort near Algonquin Park. Little gave no indication of trying to substantiate the claim. MacGregor apparently did try, however, and was compelled to reverse the claim he had made in 1973. As MacGregor noted in his 2010 book, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Northern Light</i>, there "is no evidence of any such booking." So much for 'certainty'. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.0pt;">In 2010, MacGregor actually helped to undermine the engagement theory. He convincingly argued in <i>Northern Light</i> that the Thomson photos apparently showing Winnie Trainor - the ones where she is wearing wedding rings - don't actually show Winnie Trainor. The 'engagement ring' story was a case of mistaken identity!</span><br />
<br />
<h4>
<span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.0pt;"><u><b>Conclusions</b></u> </span></h4>
<span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.0pt;">Simply stated, despite the gossip, <span style="color: red;">no evidence has been produced that Tom Thomson was engaged. </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.0pt;"><span style="color: red;"><span style="color: black;">Stories that Trainor was claiming to be engaged to Thomson are gossip, excepting Sharpe's intriguing account from the 1950s</span><span style="color: black;">. </span><span style="color: black;">We have </span>no evidence that Thomson booked a
honeymoon cabin</span>. (No one even reported this as gossip until more than fifty
years after Thomson’s death!) We also <span style="color: red;">don't have any evidence that Trainor was wearing engagement rings before Thomson's death</span>. </span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.0pt;"> </span></b><br />
<br />
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.0pt;">Surveying
the shaky origins of the ‘engagement’ story, it must be assessed as lacking any
evidence. </span></b><span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.0pt;"> </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.0pt;">The evolution of talk about engagement, the 180 degree
turnabout from Robinson’s 1930 <u>denial</u> of the ‘engagement’ gossip to MacGregor's bald-faced <u>assertion</u> of the story as fact in the 1970s (despite the absence of evidence), strongly suggests the story of Tom Thomson's engagement is very likely mere gossip. </span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.0pt;"> </span></b><br />
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.0pt;">It certainly doesn't provide any support to speculation that Tom Thomson committed suicide to avoid being married.</span></b></div>
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<br />
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.0pt;"><br /></span></b>
<br />
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11pt;"><b style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11pt;">Gregory Klages - </span></b><b style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11pt;"><b style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11pt;">© 2017</span></b></span></b></span></b><br />
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; font-weight: normal;">---</span></span></b><br />
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "gill sans";"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; font-weight: normal;">Gregory Klages was Research Director for the </span><b style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11pt;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; font-weight: normal;">website </span><a href="http://www.canadianmysteries.ca/sites/thomson/home/indexen.html" style="background-color: white; color: purple; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; font-weight: normal;">Death On A Painted Lake: The Tom Thomson Tragedy</a></span></b><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; font-weight: normal;">, launched by the Great Unsolved Mysteries in Canadian History project in 2008. Klages is the author of the 2016 book, </span><a href="https://www.dundurn.com/books/Many-Deaths-Tom-Thomson" style="background-color: white; color: purple; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; font-weight: normal;"><i>The Many Deaths of Tom Thomson: Separating Fact from Fiction</i></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; font-weight: normal;"> (Dundurn Press).</span></span></b></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-978559161676091333.post-82041959443661593882017-09-29T10:11:00.002-07:002017-09-29T10:11:20.602-07:00"Many Deaths of Tom Thomson" Toronto author talks, October 2017Toronto author talks and book signings - October 2017<br />
<br />
<b>Wed., Oct. 18, 2017</b><br />
7:00 p.m.<br />
<a class="branch-link" href="http://www.torontopubliclibrary.ca/detail.jsp?Nr=p_cat_branch_name:High%20Park">High Park</a> Public Library<span style="font-weight: normal;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-weight: normal;">228 Roncesvalles Avenue, Toronto, ON </span><span style="font-weight: normal;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-weight: normal;">M6R 2L7</span><span style="font-weight: normal;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-weight: normal;">416-393-7671 </span><br />
<b><br /></b>
<b><span style="font-weight: normal;"><b>Thurs., Oct. 19, 2017</b> </span></b><br />
6:30 p.m.<br />
<a class="branch-link" href="http://www.torontopubliclibrary.ca/detail.jsp?Nr=p_cat_branch_name:College/Shaw">College/Shaw</a> Public Library<br />
766 College Street, Toronto, ON<br />
M6G 1C4<br />
416-393-7668
<br />
<br />
<h4 class="align-top" id="branch-contact-line-height">
</h4>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-978559161676091333.post-18048540952696175002017-09-29T10:05:00.000-07:002017-09-29T10:05:07.842-07:00"Many Deaths of Tom Thomson" author talk - Shelburne Public Library, Sunday, Oct. 15<b><u>Author talk and book signing - </u> </b><br />
<b>Sunday, October 15, 2:00 p.m.</b><br />
<b> </b>
<br />
<a href="http://www.shelburnelibrary.ca/contact.html" target="_blank">Shelburne Public Library</a><br />
201 Owen Sound Street, <br />
Shelburne, Ontario <br />
L9V 3L2<br />
<a href="http://201 Owen Sound Street, Shelburne, Ontario" target="_blank">--MAP--</a><br />
<br />
Tel: 519.925.2168 <br />
Email:
<a href="mailto:info@shelburnelibrary.ca?subject=Website%20Inquiry" title="Email Shelburne Library">info@shelburnelibrary.ca</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-978559161676091333.post-1801161573152363802017-09-29T09:16:00.002-07:002019-05-24T07:47:16.139-07:00Tom Thomson death myth #9 - 'Tom died over a debt'<style>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAWQTAh78nf_eCg0Tf2XGSbPKorGjztrrVm27qsG_-HozGzooGzcEOwJhXfV1QxztuaBFnUNcKTsqwlyIjIeVQhFIMEgcypvd3IaSuOrF19bH32FuxsveWJb1VRWY_KnlUj3eo-FBBalQ/s1600/Myths+and+Errors+logo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="271" data-original-width="541" height="160" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAWQTAh78nf_eCg0Tf2XGSbPKorGjztrrVm27qsG_-HozGzooGzcEOwJhXfV1QxztuaBFnUNcKTsqwlyIjIeVQhFIMEgcypvd3IaSuOrF19bH32FuxsveWJb1VRWY_KnlUj3eo-FBBalQ/s320/Myths+and+Errors+logo.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.5pt;">Tom Thomson’s July 1917 death shocked his friends and
family. Given that the man was only 39 years old, many found his death hard to explain.
Those who examined Thomson’s corpse concluded that he drowned by accident. Nonetheless, gossip and suggestions of alternate explanations have
fuelled a century of speculation.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.5pt;"><b>In the 1970s, it was proposed that Tom Thomson died in a fight over a debt. <u>The story - dependent on gossip and demonstrable errors - is wrong.</u> </b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.5pt;">The story that Tom Thomson died over repayment of a debt can be tied to two persons. The first is Daphne Crombie, a woman who met Tom Thomson at Canoe Lake in 1917. The second is Roy MacGregor, a journalist and author who since the early 1970s has published a multitude of articles and two books regarding Thomson's death (one fiction and one non-fiction). </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.5pt;"><span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.5pt;">Although the roots of the debt story can be found in evidence recorded in 1917</span>, the idea that Thomson was killed over a debt first appeared in 1977 (sixty years after Thomson’s death!). That year, Roy MacGregor wrote 'The Legend', an article in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Canadian</i> magazine. In the article, MacGregor shared
comments he claimed to have been told by Crombie. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.5pt;">In MacGregor's account, Crombie had speculated that Tom
might have been killed by Shannon Fraser in a fight over money. (Fraser operated
Mowat Lodge in Algonquin Park, where Thomson had been living </span><span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.5pt;"><span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.5pt;">since early April 1917</span>.)
Crombie apparently offered that Thomson had loaned Fraser money, and in July
1917, asked him to repay the debt. A fistfight ensued. During its course,
Thomson fell, striking his head on the fire grate. The blow either killed
Thomson immediately, or left him unconscious. Regardless, Crombie speculated, Fraser, assisted by his wife Annie, and out of fear of being
charged with murder, hid the body in the lake.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.5pt;">In his 2010 book, <i>Northern Light</i>, MacGregor added to the story, stating that
Winnie Trainor had told Margaret Thomson (Tom’s sister) that, “</span><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.5pt;">a $250 loan Tom had made
to Fraser two years earlier had not yet been fully paid back.” *</span></span><br />
</div>
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<span style="color: red;"><b><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="background: white; font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.5pt;">An
unpaid debt, a fight, murder, and a hidden corpse... compelling anecdotes
that make a tantalizing story. The story, </span></span><span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.5pt;">as told in MacGregor’s 1977 and 2010
accounts, directly contradicts the evidence from 1917.</span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.5pt;">After Thomson’s death, several members of Tom’s family
were in contact with Winnifred Trainor, a Huntsville woman whose family leased
a cottage at Canoe Lake. In late August or early September 1917, Trainor met one of
Tom’s sisters, </span><span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.5pt;"><span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.5pt;">Margaret Thomson, </span>in Toronto. They discussed Tom’s life, and of course, his death. In
early September 1917, Margaret wrote Tom’s patron, </span><span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.5pt;"><span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.5pt;">Dr. James MacCallum, </span>sharing with him what she had learned from Trainor. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.5pt;">By the time the two women met, Margaret was aware that Tom had loaned Shannon Fraser
$250 to buy canoes. She inquired with Trainor about the loan. Trainor
told Margaret that, “</span><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.5pt;">she had asked Tom this s</span><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.5pt;">pring if he ever got that money, and he said he got it
all but in very small amounts</span><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.5pt;">.” ** </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.5pt;">Tom Harkness, Tom Thomson’s brother-in-law and
executor of Tom’s estate, pursued the issue with Fraser in September 1917,
asking, </span><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.5pt;">“did you pay Tom for the canoes
he bought for you and when.” [<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">sic</i>] </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.5pt;">The same month, Winnie reported to Tom's brother, George, what she
had told Margaret, stating, “</span><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.5pt;">Tom
said this spring while at our house that he had loaned Fraser <sup>$</sup>250.<sup>00</sup>
for canoes, but that he had got it all back but in little bits though.” </span></div>
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<b><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.5pt;">Trainor’s reports that the debt had been repaid seems to
have satisfied Harkness, who did not pursue the issue of the 'canoe
debt' any further.</span></b></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.5pt;">Following on Trainor's two statements that Fraser's debt to Tom had been repaid,
no one closely involved in Tom's life suggested that Fraser owed Tom an outstanding debt. None suggested Fraser and Thomson had a fight over money.
None suggested Tom had died seeking repayment of the debt.</span></div>
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<b><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.5pt;">MacGregor's statement that Trainor claimed the debt had not been repaid - is simply wrong.
<span style="color: red;">Trainor’s letter clearly indicates the debt <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">was</i>
repaid</span>. (See Notes below.) </span></b><br />
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<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.5pt;">It would be easy for us to
hold MacGregor culpable for his 1977 error. This is not an entirely fair
assessment, though. While he reported Crombie’s claim, we know her speculation is
contradicted by Trainor’s 1917 claims. In 1977, however, Trainor’s letter was
still held privately by the Thomson family. It was not made publicly accessible
until the 1990s, when it was donated to Library & Archives Canada. In 2008, 'Death On A Painted Lake: The Tom Thomson Tragedy' project made <a href="http://www.canadianmysteries.ca/sites/thomson/archives/privateletter/5119en.html" target="_blank">excerpts from the letter available freely</a> on the world wide web. </span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.5pt;"><br /></span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.5pt;">Writers who have retold
and expanded on Crombie/MacGregor’s ‘debt story’ since the 1990s – including
MacGregor - have overlooked or
ignored Trainor’s 1917 statements that the debt was repaid, and perpetuated a flimsy
myth about Tom Thomson’s death.</span></div>
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<span class="apple-style-span"><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.5pt;">(For instance, in 2018, </span></span><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.5pt;"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "Gill Sans"; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.5pt;">John
Little claimed in <i>Who Killed Tom Thomson?</i> that, “</span></span><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="background: white; color: black; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt;">[Fraser] had
evidently paid a good portion of the loan back, but there was still some money
owed.”)</span></span></span></span></div>
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</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
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<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.5pt;">------</span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.5pt;"><u><b>NOTES:</b></u></span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.5pt;">* MacGregor's statement can be found in Chapter 9 of <i>Northern Light: The Story of Tom Thomson and The Woman Who Loved Him</i>. For more, see the note below. Once again, he writes: "</span><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.5pt;">a $250 loan Tom had made
to Fraser two years earlier had not yet been fully paid back.”</span></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.5pt;">** The quoted passage from Margaret Thomson's 9 Sept. 1917 letter </span><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.5pt;"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.5pt;">directly contradicts MacGregor's 2010 account of what the letter says. Once again, she writes, </span></span><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.5pt;">"[Trainor] had asked Tom this s</span><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.5pt;">pring if he ever got that money, and he said he got it
all but in very small amounts</span><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.5pt;">.”</span><br />
<br />
<br />
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.0pt;"><br /></span></b>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11pt;"><b style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11pt;">Gregory Klages - </span></b><b style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11pt;"><b style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11pt;">© 2017</span></b></span></b></span></b><br />
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; font-weight: normal;">---</span></span></b><br />
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "gill sans";"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; font-weight: normal;">Gregory Klages was Research Director for the </span><b style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11pt;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; font-weight: normal;">website </span><a href="http://www.canadianmysteries.ca/sites/thomson/home/indexen.html" style="background-color: white; color: purple; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; font-weight: normal;">Death On A Painted Lake: The Tom Thomson Tragedy</a></span></b><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; font-weight: normal;">, launched by the Great Unsolved Mysteries in Canadian History project in 2008. Klages is the author of the 2016 book, </span><a href="https://www.dundurn.com/books/Many-Deaths-Tom-Thomson" style="background-color: white; color: purple; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; font-weight: normal;"><i>The Many Deaths of Tom Thomson: Separating Fact from Fiction</i></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; font-weight: normal;"> (Dundurn Press).</span></span></b></div>
</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-978559161676091333.post-72995721885035137002017-09-19T09:17:00.001-07:002018-02-28T10:47:20.212-08:00Tom Thomson death myth #10 - "Fishing line = murder."<div class="MsoNormal">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi93urheom3GiYhjl7JmmaSIvlhRaOvpd2cDKA9gkekUwh9gBRvLwtBLRfE8FsMweD2cCetJ-wvhU99iXMdWlRKzvP3Zgv_wWsxGd3x2a750qWgOKOST62rHEUNAfHQ2Ag_xnYTkD7niy8/s1600/Myths+and+Errors+logo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="271" data-original-width="541" height="160" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi93urheom3GiYhjl7JmmaSIvlhRaOvpd2cDKA9gkekUwh9gBRvLwtBLRfE8FsMweD2cCetJ-wvhU99iXMdWlRKzvP3Zgv_wWsxGd3x2a750qWgOKOST62rHEUNAfHQ2Ag_xnYTkD7niy8/s320/Myths+and+Errors+logo.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: "gill sans mt" , sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt;"><b>A
popular story <span style="font-family: "gill sans mt" , sans-serif;">relates that</span> Tom Thomson’s body was found with
fishing line wound around one ankle.<span style="font-family: "gill sans mt" , sans-serif;"> <span style="font-family: "gill sans mt" , sans-serif;">A popular interpretation is</span></span>
that the line <span style="font-family: "gill sans mt" , sans-serif;">prove</span>s someone tried to hide Thomson’s corpse by tying a weight to his body<span style="font-family: "gill sans mt" , sans-serif;"> before</span> sinking the body in the lake. <span style="color: red;"> </span></b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "gill sans mt" , sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt;"><b><span style="color: red;">Th<span style="font-family: "gill sans mt" , sans-serif;">e fishing line</span> story <span style="font-family: "gill sans mt" , sans-serif;">(</span>and <span style="font-family: "gill sans mt" , sans-serif;">the <span style="font-family: "gill sans mt" , sans-serif;">conspiracy theory spun from it<span style="font-family: "gill sans mt" , sans-serif;">) is not supported</span></span></span> <span style="font-family: "gill sans mt" , sans-serif;">by the </span>evidence we have available</span><span style="color: red;"> about Thomson's <span style="font-family: "gill sans mt" , sans-serif;">corpse</span></span>.</b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "gill sans mt" , sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt;">When
Tom Thomson’s body was discovered in July 1917, two men examined his remains: a doctor holidaying<span style="font-family: "gill sans mt" , sans-serif;"> in Algonquin Park, and an Algonqu<span style="font-family: "gill sans mt" , sans-serif;">in Pa<span style="font-family: "gill sans mt" , sans-serif;">rk Ranger</span></span></span>. <span style="font-family: "gill sans mt" , sans-serif;">At the time, n</span>either
man recorded seeing fishing line around any part of Thomson’s body. <span style="font-family: "gill sans mt" , sans-serif;">The claim that f</span>ishing line was found on Thomson's body was <span style="font-family: "gill sans mt" , sans-serif;">first made in</span> the 1930s - thirteen years after Thomson's death - <span style="font-family: "gill sans mt" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "gill sans mt" , sans-serif;">by</span></span> Park Ranger, Mark Robinson. Robinson's claim<span style="font-family: "gill sans mt" , sans-serif;"> </span>was n<span style="font-family: "gill sans mt" , sans-serif;">ever </span>corr<span style="font-family: "gill sans mt" , sans-serif;">ob<span style="font-family: "gill sans mt" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "gill sans mt" , sans-serif;">o</span>rated by</span></span> any other witnesses, though<span style="font-family: "gill sans mt" , sans-serif;">. <span style="font-family: "gill sans mt" , sans-serif;">Robinson also never explained why h<span style="font-family: "gill sans mt" , sans-serif;">is 1917 notes d<span style="font-family: "gill sans mt" , sans-serif;">on</span>'t</span> <span style="font-family: "gill sans mt" , sans-serif;">mention</span> the fishing line</span></span>. <span style="font-family: "gill sans mt" , sans-serif;">Complicating his claim further, in the 1950s, Robinson<span style="font-family: "gill sans mt" , sans-serif;"> offered yet a<span style="font-family: "gill sans mt" , sans-serif;">nother version of his</span></span> testimony<span style="font-family: "gill sans mt" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "gill sans mt" , sans-serif;">: he claimed he had noted the fishin<span style="font-family: "gill sans mt" , sans-serif;">g line in 1917 (which we know is false), reported </span></span></span><span style="font-family: "gill sans mt" , sans-serif;">different 'facts' </span>about the fishing line than he had in the 1930s, and<span style="font-family: "gill sans mt" , sans-serif;"> <span style="font-family: "gill sans mt" , sans-serif;">stated his</span></span> conclusion about </span>Thomson’s
cause of death that was <span style="font-family: "gill sans mt" , sans-serif;">different from what he stated in 1917 or 1930</span>. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "gill sans mt" , sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt;">All
of these facts strongly suggest the ‘fishing line story’ is <span style="font-family: "gill sans mt" , sans-serif;">suspect</span>, and raises the prospect that one of the pillars <span style="font-family: "gill sans mt" , sans-serif;">supporting</span> murder theor<span style="font-family: "gill sans mt" , sans-serif;">ies is weak</span>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "gill sans mt" , sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt;">We know that Tom Thomson’s body was discovered on the morning of July 16, 1917.
<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "gill sans mt" , sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt;">We
know this from several documents produced that day, and in the days that
immediately followed. The daily diary of Mark Robinson, the local Algonquin
Park Ranger, is one of the key records we have from July 1917 (<span style="font-family: "gill sans mt" , sans-serif;">worth noting<span style="font-family: "gill sans mt" , sans-serif;">: </span></span>his diary is
the only record Robinson produced in 1917). In his diary, Robinson recorded the
search for Thomson, as well as discovery and displacement of <span style="font-family: "gill sans mt" , sans-serif;">Thomson's</span> remains. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "gill sans mt" , sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt;">For
the July 16 entry, Robinson states that Thomson’s body was discovered floa<span style="font-family: "gill sans mt" , sans-serif;">ting in <span style="font-family: "gill sans mt" , sans-serif;">Algonquin <span style="font-family: "gill sans mt" , sans-serif;">Park's Canoe Lake </span></span></span>about 9
a.m. He writes that George Rowe and ‘Lowrie’ Dixon, “took same and brought it
to shore.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "gill sans mt" , sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt;">The
following day</span><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "gill sans mt" , sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt;">, Robinson records
that Thomson’s body was removed from the lake. He and Dr. G. Howland, who was
holidaying at Canoe Lake, examined the corpse. Later that day, Robinson
recorded observations about Thomson’s remains. <i>Nowhere in these notes – nor
anywhere else in his 1917 diary entries – is there mention <span style="font-family: "gill sans mt" , sans-serif;">that he <span style="font-family: "gill sans mt" , sans-serif;">found</span></span> a fishing line
around any part of Thomson’s corpse.</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "gill sans mt" , sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt;">A transcription of Howland’s
1917 notes, provided to researcher Blodwen Davies by the Nipissing Crown
Attorney’s office in the 1930s, <i>doesn’t include any mention of suspicious
fishing line</i> on Thomson’s remains either. Similarly, a transcription of
Howland’s observations held by George Thomson – Tom’s brother – also supplied
to Davies in the 1930s, <i>doesn’t mention fishing line</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "gill sans mt" , sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt;"><br />
<span style="background: white;"><b>That no 1917 account makes any mention of
suspicious fishing line is important. Clearly, in 1917, either no fishing line
was observed, or if it was observed, it was not regarded as in any way
important to Thomson’s disappearance and death.</b><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "gill sans mt" , sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt;">If the fishing line
wasn’t noted in 1917, we can learn much about the claim by tracking when it
first appeared, and how the story evolved.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "gill sans mt" , sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt;">Only one person - Mark Robinson - ever claimed that fishing line was found on Tom Thomson's corpse. <i>Robinson mentioned the line for the <u>first time</u> in a 1930 letter</i> to
Blodwen Davies, <span style="font-family: "gill sans mt" , sans-serif;">thirt</span>een years after Thomson’s death. At this time,
Robinson suggested the line was not Thomson’s regular fishing line.</span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "gill sans mt" , sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt;"><br />
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<span style="background: white;">Why Robinson would wait thirteen years to offer
this insight, particularly if he felt it provided evidence that Thomson might
have died by foul play, is difficult to understand. Making Robinson’s testimony
even more suspect, <i>in the early 1950s, he <u>added details</u> to his story about the
fishing line</i>. Robinson stated that when he examined Thomson’s corpse, he found
the line was “carefully” wound “16 or 17 times” around Thomson’s ankle.
Robinson noted that he could prove this claim because he recorded his
observations in his diary. We know, however, that <u>his diary says nothing of the
sort</u>; it doesn’t mention fishing line at all!</span><br />
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<span style="background: white;"><b>Robinson’s ‘fishing line’ stories from the 1930s
and 1950s do not agree with any 1917 evidence (even evidence recorded by
Robinson himself in 1917). This should raise our suspicions about the tale.
That Robinson’s accounts gained new elements and more details over decades also
suggests sk<span style="font-family: "gill sans mt" , sans-serif;">epticism about </span>Robinson's claims </b></span></span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "gill sans mt" , sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt;"><span style="background: white;"><b><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "gill sans mt" , sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt;"><span style="background: white;"><b> </b></span></span>– particularly those furthest from
the experiences he describes - is necessary.</b><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "gill sans mt" , sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt;">So, is the fishing
line story purely fiction? Did Robinson invent it out of thin air? What if the
fishing line existed, but has an innocent explanation?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "gill sans mt" , sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt;">Robinson was not
present when Thomson’s body was discovered, or when it was brought to shore. His
diary doesn’t mention how the guides brought Thomson’s body to shore, or to
anchor the body once it was brought to shore. If the guides used fishing line
to tow or anchor the body, as time passed Robinson might have forgotten this
entirely logical explanation. If this is the case, however, it does not explain
why Robinson would not have asked questions about it in 1917. The record he produced
at the time Thomson’s body was discovered<span style="font-family: "gill sans mt" , sans-serif;"> </span>suggests that Robinson’s suspicions were not raised, either because the fishing line had a reasonable
explanation, or because he never saw it all.</span><br />
<span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "gill sans mt" , sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt;"></span><br />
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11pt;"><b style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11pt;">Gregory Klages - </span></b><b style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11pt;"><b style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11pt;">© 2017</span></b></span></b></span></b><br />
<br />
<span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "gill sans mt" , sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "gill sans mt" , sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11.0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; font-weight: normal;">---</span></span></b></span><br />
<span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "gill sans mt" , sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt;"><b><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "gill sans mt" , sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt;"><o:p>P<span style="font-family: "gill sans mt" , sans-serif;">er<span style="font-family: "gill sans mt" , sans-serif;">plexed? Challenged? Interested in reading more?</span></span></o:p></span></b></span></div>
<br />
<span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "gill sans mt" , sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt;"><o:p><span style="font-family: "gill sans mt" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "gill sans mt" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "gill sans mt" , sans-serif;">To read more <span style="font-family: "gill sans mt" , sans-serif;">evidence about Tom Thomson'<span style="font-family: "gill sans mt" , sans-serif;">s d<span style="font-family: "gill sans mt" , sans-serif;">eath, and to learn how story-telling about Thomson's death has diver<span style="font-family: "gill sans mt" , sans-serif;">ged further and further from the evidence, read </span></span></span></span></span><a href="https://www.dundurn.com/books/Many-Deaths-Tom-Thomson"><i>The Many Deaths of Tom Thomson: Separating Fact from Fiction</i></a> (Dundurn Press, 2016). </span></span></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "gill sans mt" , sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt;"><o:p><span style="font-family: "gill sans mt" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "gill sans mt" , sans-serif;">Gregory K<span style="font-family: "gill sans mt" , sans-serif;">lages was Research <span style="font-family: "gill sans mt" , sans-serif;">Director <span style="font-family: "gill sans mt" , sans-serif;">for <a href="http://www.canadianmysteries.ca/sites/thomson/home/indexen.html" target="_blank"><i>Death On A Painted Lake: The Tom Thomson T</i></a><span style="font-family: "gill sans mt" , sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.canadianmysteries.ca/sites/thomson/home/indexen.html" target="_blank"><i>ragedy</i></a><span style="font-family: "gill sans mt" , sans-serif;">, part of the international<span style="font-family: "gill sans mt" , sans-serif;"> award-winning Great Unsolved Myster<span style="font-family: "gill sans mt" , sans-serif;">ies in Canadian History project.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span> </span></span> </o:p></span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-978559161676091333.post-81349048046509184972017-07-24T16:16:00.001-07:002017-07-24T16:16:21.022-07:00Author talk - Sep. 26, 7 p.m. - Yorkville Public Library<b>Author talk and book signing - </b><br /><span class="start-date">Tue Sep 26, 2017 - 7:00 p.m.</span><br />
<b><br /></b>
<b><a href="http://www.torontopubliclibrary.ca/detail.jsp?Nr=p_cat_branch_name:Yorkville" target="_blank">Yorkville Public Library</a></b><br />
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<span style="font-weight: normal;">22 Yorkville Avenue, </span><br />
<span style="font-weight: normal;">Toronto, ON <br />
M4W 1L4
</span><br />
<span style="font-weight: normal;">
</span><div class="sprite clear-left overflow-hidden">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">
416-393-7660
</span></div>
</h4>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-978559161676091333.post-55144585511690634622017-07-24T16:00:00.000-07:002017-07-24T16:19:15.692-07:00Author talk - Sep. 21, 6:30 pm - Dawes Road Public Library<b>Author talk and book signing</b><br />
<b><span class="start-date">Thursday, Sep 21, 2017 - 6:30 p.m.</span> </b><br />
<b><br /></b>
<a href="http://www.torontopubliclibrary.ca/detail.jsp?Nr=p_cat_branch_name:Dawes%20Road" target="_blank"><b>Dawes Road Public Library</b></a><br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: normal;">416 Dawes Road, Toronto, ON </span><span style="font-weight: normal;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-weight: normal;">M4B 2E8</span><span style="font-weight: normal;"></span><span style="font-weight: normal;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-weight: normal;">416-396-3820
</span><br />
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</h4>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-978559161676091333.post-50892940480970310622017-07-07T09:43:00.001-07:002017-07-07T09:58:17.108-07:00On the 100th anniversary of Tom Thomson's disappearance<div 36.0pt="" class="MsoNormal" text-indent:="">
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<a href="http://www.biographi.ca/bioimages/original.2501.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.biographi.ca/bioimages/original.2501.jpg" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="608" height="320" width="243" /></a></div>
<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 11.0pt;">On July 8, 1917 - 100 years ago - Canadian painter Tom Thomson disappeared while canoeing in Ontario's Algonquin Park. He was never seen alive again. While then relatively unknown as an artist, his reputation grew significantly after his death. In 1920, his friends and peers went on to found the Group of Seven, arguably Canada's most famous cultural point of reference. The Group members cited Thomson's influence on their work, and gave him credit for inspiring their interest the landscape of Ontario's Canadian Shield. </span></div>
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<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 11.0pt;"> As Thomson's reputation grew, so did interest in his life, and particularly, in his death. Since the 1970s, a significant body of writing has been devoted to exploring Thomson's disappearance and demise. These works have offered arguments based on evidence, hearsay, speculation, and sometimes even outright fictions regarding what happened to Thomson in July 1917. While some have served to expand our knowledge, others have served to further confuse our understanding of what happened to Tom Thomson 100 years ago. </span></div>
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<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: x-large;">Myths have displaced the facts</span></h4>
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<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 11.0pt;">When beginning the work that would become <i><a href="http://www.canadianmysteries.ca/sites/thomson/home/indexen.html" target="_blank">Death on A Painted Lake: The Tom Thomson Tragedy</a>,</i> I surveyed much of the literature that has been written about Tom Thomson's demise, particularly over the last few decades. I encountered stories of drunken fights, unpaid debts, unwanted pregnancy, suicide coverups, and murder conspiracies. What I was surprised to discover, as I turned to the primary evidence - the documents written in 1917 - was how few of these claims had any evidence to support them. What I soon came to realize is that <b><i>much of what we've been told of Tom Thomson's last spring and death is more myth than fact</i></b>.<i><br /></i></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 11.0pt;">In particular, much of the writing claiming Thomson's death was the result of suicide or murder incorporates
fanciful speculation rooted in
gossip, misunderstanding, and entertaining but ultimately untrustworthy stories. </span></div>
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<h4>
<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 11.0pt;"> </span></h4>
<h4>
<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 11.0pt;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">What are the roots of the mythology?</span> </span> </span><span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 11.0pt;"></span></h4>
<br />
<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 11.0pt;">Tom Thomson was initially buried in Algonquin Park. Much of the mystery
surrounding Thomson’s death was initially fed by awkward communication
regarding the Thomson family’s wishes for Tom’s remains. Evidence
from the time indicates his family never wanted to have him buried in Algonquin
Park, and tried to communicate their wishes to those at Canoe Lake, where his body was discovered and first buried.
Technological problems and poorly worded telegrams from those in Canoe Lake produced
delays that had repercussions for those living and working in the presence of
their friend’s decomposing body. Without word of the Thomson family’s wishes, all at
Canoe Lake agreed something must be done. The exceptional challenge of having
to deal with a tragic death in the small community, and perhaps some insecurity
about who should have responsibility for decision-making regarding Thomson's body, resulted in decisions
being made on the fly. Anxiety was no doubt compounded when it was discovered that the decision reached by those at Canoe Lake did not
accord with the Thomson family's desires. </span></div>
<div 36.0pt="" class="MsoNormal" text-indent:="">
<br />
<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 11.0pt;">Conflict
over such an emotional issue clearly caused consternation and frustration all around. The exhumation of Thomson’s body from his Algonquin Park burial site within a day of his preliminary burial created fertile ground
for hostility and suspicion over the decades to come. Eventually, these feelings would bear ill fruit.</span></div>
<div 36.0pt="" class="MsoNormal" text-indent:="">
<h4>
<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 11.0pt;"> </span></h4>
<h4>
<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: x-large;">How should Tom Thomson's death be remembered?</span></h4>
<br />
<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 11.0pt;">Over the last century, Thomson has often been characterized as a deft outdoorsman with natural skill at painting a
unique, distinctively Canadian environment that he knew well. This is an image
that Thomson’s friends and supporters worked to advance after his death. It was integral to the rise of his reputation. If Thomson died as a result of
a canoeing accident in the middle of the day on a calm lake, this image would
be significantly destabilized. It is not however, an image, that is necessary
to appreciate Thomson’s contribution to the development of Canadian painting.
As Harold Town observed, decades of speculation regarding how Tom Thomson died
have done little but cloud our understanding of Thomson’s life and the
importance of his art. Acceptance of what the evidence suggests about Thomson's death, that he
died by accident and not suicide or murder, points to the importance of
understanding his painting not through the lens of romantic myth, but as what
it was, the inspiring efforts of a skilled
and hard-working artist - an artist who could still, nonetheless, make mistakes and suffer accidents. </span></div>
<div 36.0pt="" class="MsoNormal" text-indent:="">
<br />
<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 11.0pt;">That Tom
Thomson’s painting has become part of the national identity, one of the types
of symbols that Canadians share as part of their common language, is a grand
legacy for a man who had little art training, but who took the greatest
pleasures in life from painting out under the open sky. That he died under that
same sky, on the waters and among the trees and islands that populate his
paintings is no doubt tragic, and will ever remain so. A hundred years on from
his passing, however, he has not been forgotten, nor has the land he loved.
Every year thousands of people flock to see his paintings, and to visit
Algonquin Park. As a model, as inspiration, his influence lives on. Beyond
ideas about his mental state, or his romantic life, or how he managed to get
along with his peers, what Tom Thomson is remembered for is the passion that
gave his life meaning. </span></div>
<br />
<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 11.0pt;">Whether by accident or by natural causes, the
fact is that death cannot be put off forever. We have no guarantee of how or
when we will die, or what kind of legacy we will leave. Thomson likely cared
little about the former, and would be heartily gratified knowing what role he
played, and continues to play over a century later, in alerting Canadians to
their artistic and natural heritage.</span><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<h2>
<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: x-large;">Tom Thomson - 1877-1917 - Rest in peace. </span></h2>
<h2>
<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: x-large;"> </span></h2>
<h2>
<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: x-large;"> </span>
</h2>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-978559161676091333.post-53212291633491652522017-07-07T08:01:00.001-07:002017-07-07T08:01:59.901-07:00July 8, 2017 - Observe 100th anniversary of Tom Thomson's disappearance<h1>
100th Anniversary of Tom Thomson's Disappearance</h1>
<h2 style="color: #e8a800;">
July 8, 2017 -- 2 p.m. </h2>
<span><div>
Join cultural historian Dr. Gregory Klages to commemorate the
100th anniversary of the disappearance of renowned Canadian landscape
painter Tom Thomson. </div>
</span><span><img align="right" alt="100th Anniversary of Tom Thomson's Disappearance" src="http://www.greyroots.com/media/126x126/Tom%20Thomson.jpg" /></span><span>
<div>
</div>
<div>
Klages uses first-hand testimony and archival records to sort fact
from popular legends in writing about Thomson's mysterious demise. His
2016 book, <i><strong>The Many Deaths of Tom Thomson: Separating Fact from Fiction</strong></i>,
has appeared on the <i>National Post</i> Canadian non-fiction bestseller list,
and was included in the Writers' Trust of Canada Best Books of 2016.
Copies of the book will be available for purchase and signing. This is a
free event.</div>
<div>
</div>
<div>
<div>
<a href="http://www.greyroots.com/programs-events/events/index.cfm?print&I=8697">http://www.greyroots.com/programs-events/events/index.cfm?print&I=8697</a> </div>
<div>
</div>
</div>
</span><strong>Grey Roots Museum & Archives</strong><br />
102599 Grey Road 18, RR4, Owen Sound ON, N4K 5N6<br /> Tel. 519-376-3690, Fax. 519-376-4654<br /> Web: <a href="http://www.greyroots.com/">www.greyroots.com</a><br />
<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-978559161676091333.post-22131274124566956982017-06-13T11:11:00.000-07:002017-06-14T12:10:43.340-07:00Mark Robinson's influential, but inconsistent, testimony about Tom ThomsonOver a period of almost four decades, Mark Robinson, the Algonquin Park Ranger who in July 1917 organized the search for missing artist Tom Thomson, produced multiple remembrances: anecdotes about the artist, accounts of Thomson’s last days, and descriptions of the days following discovery of Thomson’s corpse.<br />
<br />
Robinson’s testimony - without much distinction being made between the various accounts provided over thirty-five years - has often been portrayed as the definitive, authoritative account of the conditions surrounding Thomson’s death. While it is true that Robinson’s 1917 testimony regarding what happened to Tom Thomson must be considered – his daily diary is one of the few ‘on the scene’ accounts we have - inconsistencies and contradictions between Robinson’s 1917 account and his later accounts requires that all of his testimony should be approached with skepticism.
<b> </b><br />
<br />
<b>What was Mark Robinson’s involvement in this case?<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSXU0JdPivTcMFmtkO7s1Op4VMWZEMHMeawHGlUMjtek3hfZiQ67_62chxy67ueR4tU7nGQAOAgmxdnQMf4UmPM02CWr2t_Ho24HKe8aVt5BNyyZEYDDBGnHAB8X-ul8yHMUKYbLMCNzk/s1600/355616_3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="479" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSXU0JdPivTcMFmtkO7s1Op4VMWZEMHMeawHGlUMjtek3hfZiQ67_62chxy67ueR4tU7nGQAOAgmxdnQMf4UmPM02CWr2t_Ho24HKe8aVt5BNyyZEYDDBGnHAB8X-ul8yHMUKYbLMCNzk/s320/355616_3.jpg" width="255" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Mark Robinson. Undated. Algonquin Park Museum & Archives. </b><br />
APMA 184</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</b><br />
Mark Robinson first served as an Algonquin Park Ranger from 1909 through to 1915.<br />
<br />
Robinson met Tom Thomson in 1912. His daily diaries for 1912, 1913 and 1915 include brief references to Thomson as one of many people moving through the park.<br />
<br />
In fall 1915, Robinson took up service with the Canadian military, serving in Canada and Europe until the winter of 1916/17.<br />
<br />
In April 1917, Robinson returned to service at Algonquin Park’s Joe Lake Station, within easy walking distance of Canoe Lake’s Mowat Lodge. As the presiding park authority for the area, when Tom Thomson went missing in July 1917, Robinson organized the search. He also attended the examination of Thomson’s corpse conducted by Dr. G. W. Howland on July 19, 1917.<br />
<br />
Robinson would serve as a park Ranger into the early 1940s, and passed away in 1955.<br />
<br />
<b>What accounts did Mark Robinson produce?</b><br />
We have, essentially, three accounts from Robinson.<br />
<br />
One body of testimony was produced in July 1917. Robinson maintained a daily diary, in which he recorded observations about park life, including lists of tasks he completed each day, the conditions of animals and plants, and notes about who was moving through the park (along with where they were from and what their activities in the park would be). He also sometimes noted his own feelings or rumours, such as his comment in April 1917 that he believed Martin Blecher Jr. was a "German spy."<br />
<br />
A second body of testimony is a series of letters Robinson exchanged with Tom Thomson biographer Blodwen Davies in 1930 and 1931. Davies had published a Thomson biography in 1930, and had sought out many of Thomson’s acquaintances, Robinson among them. Through his letters, Robinson provided anecdotes about Thomson’s art, his attitude toward nature, remembrances about the search for Thomson, and suggestions about who else might offer useful information.<br />
<br />
A third body of testimony is an audio recording of Robinson, likely produced in 1953 by Taylor Statten at Canoe Lake (an Alex Edmison transcription is held by the National Gallery of Canada). The recording preserves Robinson’s story-telling about Thomson, including his ideas about Thomson’s disappearance and death. He was clearly relating his tales to a small audience, who can be heard applauding at the end of the recording.<br />
<br />
<b>What is it about Robinson’s testimony that isn’t trustworthy?</b><br />
A regrettable tendency among commentators addressing Thomson’s death is to approach Robinson’s three bodies of testimony as consistent when they are not. The evolution in Robinson’s accounts and claims is critical to explain if we are to make sense of what Robinson contributes to our understanding of Thomson’s death.<br />
<br />
For instance, let’s consider two critical examples of how key aspects of Robinson’s testimony changed from 1917 through to the 1950s.<br />
<br />
<br />
<i>EXAMPLE 1:</i><br />
<i>Robinson's testimony about Thomson's injuries, and the conclusions these injuries suggesting about Thomson's cause of death, changed over decades. </i><br />
<br />
In his <a href="http://www.canadianmysteries.ca/sites/thomson/tragedy/discovery/5534en.html" target="_blank">1917 daily diary</a>, Robinson noted a bruise on Thomson’s temple, which he suggested was “evidently caused by falling on a rock.” He also states, “otherwise no marks of violence on body.”<br />
<br />
In the 1930s, he backed away from his suggestion of accidental death, stating, “<a href="http://www.canadianmysteries.ca/sites/thomson/investigations/1918-1932/5023en.html" target="_blank">Tom was said to have been drowned. It may be quite true but the mystery remains</a>.” While he perhaps speculated that Thomson suffered foul play, we don’t have any written records confirming this suspicion.<br />
<br />
The first written record we have where Robinson suggests Thomson was murdered was <a href="http://www.canadianmysteries.ca/sites/thomson/investigations/1950-1965/5247en.html" target="_blank">produced in the 1950s</a>. It was then that Robinson <i>introduced</i> the suggestion that Thomson’s temple “looked as if he had been struck – struck with the edge of a paddle.” <br />
<br />
Robinson’s inconsistent testimony about the condition of Thomson's
corpse, and Robinson's conclusions regarding the condition of the
remains, has provided much of the impetus for murder conspiracy
theories.<br />
<br />
<br />
<i>EXAMPLE 2: </i><br />
<i>Related to the 'murder' story, those who suggest Tom Thomson was found with fishing line around his leg owe this claim to a selective reading of Mark Robinson’s changing testimony. </i><br />
<br />
In 1917, Robinson makes no mention of a fishing line around any part of Thomson’s corpse in the notes he made after inspecting Thomson’s remains. (In fact, no 1917 account makes mention of fishing line found on Thomson’s corpse.)<br />
<br />
This is important, because the <u>first</u> mention of the fishing line that we have comes from Mark Robinson. In 1930, almost fifteen years after Thomson’s death, Robinson mentioned the line for the first time to Thomson biographer, Blodwen Davies. At this time, Robinson suggested the line was not Thomson’s regular line.<br />
<br />
Making Robinson’s testimony even more suspect, in the early 1950s, Robinson added details to his story about the fishing line, stating that it was “carefully” wound “16 or 17 times” around Thomson’s ankle.<br />
<br />
That the two later accounts did not agree with any 1917 evidence (even evidence provided by Robinson himself) should raise suspicions. That over 35 years Robinson introduced new details into his accounts, and that contrary to how human memory works the accounts became more detailed, also suggests skepticism about Robinson’s claims is necessary.<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>What can we conclude? </b><br />
In his 1917 account, Mark Robinson does not indicate that he suspected that Thomson’s death was anything but accidental. Even his circumstantial testimony records no features pointing to Thomson having suffered foul play or committing suicide. Robinson certainly did not record that he raised any concerns with the coroner or park superintendent.<br />
<br />
Thirteen years later, his accounts had evolved. While he does not challenge the conclusion that Thomson died by accident, he intimates that something about the story is not fully known.<br />
<br />
By the early 1950s, his claims and conclusions had changed yet again. In the 1950s, he suggested that Thomson had <i>clearly</i> been murdered. Frustratingly, he doesn't provide any explanation why he offered no indication of this belief in 1917 or during the 1930s, or evidence to support such an interpretation.<br />
<br />
We do know that working as the Canoe Lake park ranger for decades after Thomson’s death, Robinson was called upon to share his memories many, many times. Over decades, with retelling upon retelling of his stories, perhaps Robinson’s memories become fuzzy, perhaps he even confused memories with fanciful recollections.<br />
<br />
For those who suggest that this suggestion unfairly besmirches Robinson’s reputation, we do have some evidence that he misrepresented facts. In the 1950s, he supports his claim regarding the number of times fishing line was wound around Thomson’s ankle with the statement, “I know this because I have it written down in my diary.” Robinson was fortunate that none of his friends were curious enough to ask Robinson to prove this. Why? As I mentioned above, <u>Robinson’s daily diary includes no mention of fishing line at all</u>. <b>His 1950s statement - whether by error or lie - is simply wrong about a critical fact</b>.<br />
<br />
But, surely, some claim, couldn’t Robinson simply have remembered more about the story than he did in 1917? This is possible. Over time he may also have made different sense of what he remembered.<br />
<br />
I believe we can explain some of the evolution in Robinson’s testimony by looking at the evidence. For instance, if Robinson’s memory about fishing line is correct, there is a far more simple, straight-forward explanation for it being found around Thomson’s ankle than an attempt to hide a corpse. For more on this topic, see Chapter 10 of <a href="http://ow.ly/pRKe301fTIW" target="_blank"><i>The Many Deaths of Tom Thomson</i></a>.<br />
<br />
Whatever the explanation, the inconsistencies in Robinson’s accounts regarding Tom Thomson’s death strongly suggest that all of Robinson’s testimony merits careful consideration. The ‘facts’ he remembers don’t always line up with contemporary accounts produced by others, and just as importantly, Robinson’s accounts produced over 35 years aren’t always consistent with each other. In this regard, the authority of any of Robinson’s accounts about the life and death of Tom Thomson is questionable.
<br />
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---<br />
<br />
All of the links for this post direct back to excerpts of transcribed historical documents provided on the website <a href="http://www.canadianmysteries.ca/sites/thomson/home/indexen.html">Death On A Painted Lake: The Tom Thomson Tragedy</a>. Gregory Klages was Research Director for the site, launched by the Great Unsolved Mysteries in Canadian History project in 2008. Klages is the author of the 2016 book, <a href="https://www.dundurn.com/books/Many-Deaths-Tom-Thomson"><i>The Many Deaths of Tom Thomson: Separating Fact from Fiction</i></a> (Dundurn Press).<br />
<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.canadianmysteries.ca/sites/thomson/images/top-banner-en.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.canadianmysteries.ca/sites/thomson/images/top-banner-en.jpg" /></a></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-978559161676091333.post-20463878891703402662017-05-24T17:34:00.000-07:002017-05-24T17:34:26.592-07:00June 21, 2017 - Historic Leith Church (site of Tom Thomson's grave)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.leithchurch.ca/TTW100.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.leithchurch.ca/TTW100.jpg" width="640" height="160" data-original-width="800" data-original-height="200" /></a></div><BR><BR>
As part of the Historic Leith Church's '<b>Tom Thomson's Wake: 100 Years Later</b>' program:<BR>
Gregory Klages, speaking on <i>The Many Deaths of Tom Thomson: Separating Fact from Fiction</i>.<BR><BR>
<b>Date:</b> Wednesday, June 21, 7:30 p.m.<BR>
<b>Location:</b> Historical Leith Church <BR><BR>
Q&A session to follow.<BR>
Book will be available for purchase/signing.<BR><BR>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.leithchurch.ca/MaptoLeithChurch.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.leithchurch.ca/MaptoLeithChurch.jpg" width="320" height="199" data-original-width="480" data-original-height="299" /></a></div>
<b>Tickets:</b> $10 <BR>
Available at Roxy Theatre, Owen Sound<BR>
519-371-2833<BR>
<a href="http://roxytheatre.ca/">roxytheatre.ca/</a><BR><BR>
All proceeds from this event directed to the Leith Church Maintenance and Building Fund. <BR><BR>
For more info: <a href="http://www.leithchurch.ca/Tom.pdf">http://www.leithchurch.ca/Tom.pdf</a>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-978559161676091333.post-24410574464011452002017-04-28T14:03:00.000-07:002017-06-16T07:27:00.398-07:00Was Winnie Trainor engaged to Tom Thomson? Dr. Noble Sharpe's notes<style>
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<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt;">
<b>O</b>ver the last century, discussion
of Canadian painter Tom Thomson’s 1917 death has included wild
claims and poorly-grounded speculation. Over the last few decades, the claim has been frequently offered that Thomson was engaged or being pressured to marry a local woman,
Winnifred Trainor. Trainor's family lived just outside Algonquin Park in
Huntsville, Ontario, and leased a cottage at Canoe Lake, where Thomson spent
time every summer from 1912 to 1917. <b>In Chapter 11 of <a href="https://www.dundurn.com/books/Many-Deaths-Tom-Thomson"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Many Deaths of Tom Thomson: Separating
Fact from Fiction</i></a>, I challenge the suggestion that Tom Thomson and
Winnifred Trainor were engaged.</b></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt;">
Recently,
I took up this argument in an exchange on a social media platform. A comment by
one of the discussion’s participants particularly caught my attention. It made reference to rarely discussed testimony from Trainor, recorded by Dr.
Noble Sharpe. Those familiar with the Thomson case might recall that in 1956, Sharpe
supervised exhumation of unidentified human remains found in Algonquin Park. Some
have claimed those remains are Tom Thomson’s. </div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt;">
Sharpe's
notes, written between the late 1950s and mid-1970s, record conversations he
had with Winnifred Trainor in 1956, and perhaps in 1957. They indicate Trainor
claimed to have been engaged to Thomson. In a 1970 article he wrote about the
case, Sharpe published what Trainor had told him. Sharpe’s claims have not been
widely discussed in writing about Thomson’s death.<br />
<br />
In <i><a href="https://www.dundurn.com/books/Many-Deaths-Tom-Thomson" target="_blank">The Many Deaths of Tom Thomson</a></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">, </i>I discussed Sharpe’s 1956 forensic
conclusions about the unidentified remains, but I didn’t address his notes
about conversations with Trainor. Given the reference to Sharpe’s claims in
the recent conversation about Thomson's death, and my lack of comment in <i><a href="https://www.dundurn.com/books/Many-Deaths-Tom-Thomson" target="_blank">The Many Deaths of Tom Thomson</a></i>, I’ll consider his
comments more carefully here.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt;">
---------------------------------</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt;">
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt;">
Dr.
Noble Sharpe was a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">bona fide</i> forensic
expert. In 1956, he had been the medical director of the Ontario Attorney
General’s Laboratory (now Ontario’s Centre of Forensic Sciences) for five years.
In October 1956, he was instructed to supervise exhumation of unidentified human
remains that had been discovered near Mowat Cemetery, at Canoe Lake, Algonquin
Park. As Sharpe relates it, when the remains were found, he was already headed
to the area west of the park to conduct an inquest. Proximity may have played a factor in having the
Lab’s Director supervise exhumation of the remains. </div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt;">
Sharpe
had no personal history with Canoe Lake. He did not holiday there, or have
friends who holidayed there. He did not personally know any of the people
concerned with the 1956 discovery of human remains or the Tom Thomson case, Trainor included. Outside of his investigation of the
remains, he had no cause to have conversations with Canoe Lake residents. In
October 1956, he spent part of a day at Canoe Lake, most of which was spent at
the exhumation site. There is no record that he met or talked with Winnifred
Trainor while there. Sharpe's association with the case was easily discoverable,
though; <a href="http://www.canadianmysteries.ca/sites/thomson/investigations/1950-1965/5099en.html" target="_blank">his leadership of the 1956 exhumation was reported in popular newspaper articles</a>.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt;">
In
the mid-1960s, a CBC staffer asked Sharpe if he might be willing to contribute his
expertise to a television documentary regarding Tom Thomson’s death. Sharpe shared
his reflections on the case, and offered substantial feedback on the CBC’s
plans and scripts. A preliminary document he produced is a chronology of events
around the 1956 case. The chronology states that on October 22, 1956, he received
several calls from Winnifred Trainor. During these calls, he notes, Trainor
claimed to have been engaged to Thomson. Sharpe repeats Trainor’s claim in
later documents, although his notations regarding the number of times and dates
he spoke with Trainor are not consistent.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt;">
<h4>
Sharpe's
record might be understood as evidence that Trainor and Thomson were engaged. Closer
analysis reveals several critical problems, however, with the notes themselves and
with the testimony they record. These problems suggest Trainor's claims, as reported, are generally
untrustworthy.</h4>
<h4>
</h4>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt;">
<h3>
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">1) Quality of evidence:</b></h3>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt;">
Sharpe’s notes record a recollection of events made more than a decade
after the fact. The 1968 notes might reflect documentary evidence from 1956 that Sharpe had at
hand. They might, however, also reflect merely what he remembered. If so, differences
between what he recorded in 1956 and what he recorded in 1968 should be carefully
considered.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt;">
I
point this out because<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> differences do
exist</i>. None of Sharpe's notes produced in 1956 record calls from Trainor (see, for instance, <a href="http://www.canadianmysteries.ca/sites/thomson/investigations/1950-1965/5040en.html" target="_blank">his Oct. 30, 1956 notes about the case</a>). Another
set of notes he produced in 1959 doesn’t mention calls from Trainor, either. His
1968 insertion of calls from Trainor into the chronology of 1956 events (calls that don’t appear in his 1950s notes) suggests
that in 1968 Sharpe was not strictly working from his case notes, but also from memory.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt;">
Of
course, that Sharpe first mentions the calls more than a decade after the fact
doesn’t mean that the calls didn’t occur. Perhaps they were recorded in a document
that was not preserved. Perhaps he simply remembered them, only perceiving
their importance later.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt;">
Assuming
the calls were made, the absence of 1956 notes about conversations with Trainor
is intriguing. It suggests that until the late 1960s Sharpe did not even feel
Trainor's claim was significant enough to record. It is hard to believe that in
the 1950s Sharpe would not have recognized that Trainor’s claim represented a
significant departure from the usual stories of Thomson’s life. That he
did not choose to record her claims then might be a good indication of how
trustworthy he found Trainor’s claim. </div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt;">
The
change in Sharpe’s accounts between the 1950s and 1960s should also serve as a
strong reminder. We would be making a mistake if we granted the same
evidentiary value to a recollection made more than ten years after the events
in question as we do to a document produced at the time of the events. This
point is important when we compare two sets of notes Sharpe made in 1968 with
each other.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt;">
<h3>
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">2) Inconsistencies in Sharpe’s 1960s notes:</b></h3>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt;">
We
know that Sharpe’s 1968 notations are inconsistent with those he made in the
1950s. Interpretation of his claims is made even more difficult when we realize
that two documents he wrote about the case in 1968, within a few months of each
other, are not consistent.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt;">
Between February and
August 1968, Sharpe produced a hand-written chronology regarding the case. These notes were likely for his personal use. In the notes, Sharpe indicates that Trainor called him <u>several times on October
22, 1956</u>.<br />
<br />
In August 1968,
Sharpe typed comments on a CBC television documentary ‘proposed scenario’.
This second set of notes was likely for
communication to the CBC program producers. These comments sometimes restate <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">verbatim</i>
what appeared in the hand-written notes. In the typed comments, Sharpe states that
Trainor “<u>phoned me several times in 1956-7</u>.”<br />
<br />
In his <a href="http://www.canadianmysteries.ca/sites/thomson/investigations/1966-1978/5066en.html">article published in the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Canadian
Forensic Science Journal</i></a> in 1970, he does not detail how many times he and
Trainor spoke. In a note produced later in the 1970s, he repeats his claim that
he spoke with Trainor several times in 1956 and 1957.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt;">
In
light of these varying claims, what can we make of Sharpe's comments? It seems
reasonable to suggest that Trainor called Sharpe more than once in 1956, likely
in October. If she called him again, later in 1956 or in 1957, she doesn’t seem to have offered
any new information, or Sharpe dismissed the calls as so unimportant as not
even deserving a note. Alternatively, after more than decade, perhaps Sharpe wasn’t
sure when, or how many times Trainor called him. This suggestion might help
explain the variations in his notes; he did not feel confident committing <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">publicly</i> or to the CBC producers exactly
when or how many times Trainor had called him.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt;">
<h3>
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">3) Contradictions in Trainor’s claims and
1917 evidence </b></h3>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt;">
Setting
aside the inconsistencies in Sharpe’s record regarding how many times he and
Trainor spoke, evidence suggests Trainor’s claims (as recorded by Sharpe) should not
be trusted. Trainor’s claim about being engaged to Thomson was one among a number of other
claims that appear to have very likely been intentionally false. </div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt;">
In
both his handwritten and typed 1968 notes, Sharpe states Trainor told him that
she and her father were present when the “second undertaker” returned with
Thomson’s body, and that she was sure Thomson’s body was in the casket.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt;">
The
reference to the ‘second undertaker’ presumably refers to the Huntsville undertaker,
Churchill, who exhumed Tom Thomson’s corpse for relocation to the Thomson
family plot in Leith. Park Ranger Mark Robinson's 1917 daily diary records that
<a href="http://www.canadianmysteries.ca/sites/thomson/tragedy/discovery/5534en.html" target="_blank">the undertaker arrived on the night of July 18th</a>, and the casket containing
Thomson’s exhumed body was <a href="http://www.canadianmysteries.ca/sites/thomson/tragedy/response/5535en.html" target="_blank">loaded on the evening train at Canoe Lake Station the following night</a> (July 19<sup>th</sup>). </div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt;">
Mark
Robinson records that <a href="http://www.canadianmysteries.ca/sites/thomson/tragedy/discovery/5534en.html">Winnifred
Trainor left on the train from Canoe Lake Station</a> on
the evening of July 17th. <a href="http://www.canadianmysteries.ca/sites/thomson/tragedy/response/5046en.html">Phone
records</a>, as well as her own August 1917 letters to Thomson family members
indicate Trainor was in Scotia Junction on the morning of the 18<sup>th</sup>. </div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt;">
We
do not have any records indicating Trainor returned to Canoe Lake in time to be
standing on the train platform on the evening of July 19. In the months following Tom's death, when <a href="http://www.canadianmysteries.ca/sites/thomson/tragedy/response/5227en.html">she
described to Tom's family her attempts to intervene in decision-making about Tom's remains and beliefs about Tom's death</a>, she never mentions returning to Canoe Lake for
the 19<sup>th</sup>. She never suggested that she had seen Thomson’s casket
being loaded on the train.<br />
<br />
Margaret Thomson, one of Tom’s sisters, met Trainor
in Toronto in August 1917. Margaret’s notes about that conversation don’t
include any mention of Trainor claiming to have seen the exhumed casket.<br />
<br />
Sharpe’s
1968 notes are the <i>first mention</i> we have of Trainor being present in Canoe Lake
on July 19th. Logic suggests this exceptional claim was not produced by new
rigour being applied to investigation of the fifty-year old case, or new primary evidence
being located. It is also very unlikely that Trainor merely had previously overlooked mentioning that she had viewed Thomson's exhumed casket. Trainor’s testimony as recorded by Dr. Sharpe very likely indicates Trainor purposefully attempted to deceive
Sharpe in the 1950s.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt;">
An
additional piece of evidence, not produced directly by Sharpe, supports the conclusion that Sharpe’s recollections <u>and</u> Trainor’s claims might be inaccurate, if not untrustworthy.<br />
<br />
In November
1973, Dr. Sharpe’s friend and peer, Dr. Doug Lucas, then Director of the
Ontario Attorney General’s Laboratory, arranged a meeting between Dr. Sharpe
and Charles Plewman. In 1972, Plewman wrote an <a href="http://www.canadianmysteries.ca/sites/thomson/investigations/1966-1978/5278en.html" target="_blank">article about Thomson’s death for the Canadian Camping Association magazine</a>. In 1973, he approached Lucas after
hearing him speak about the case at a Toronto Rotary Club meeting. In his notes
about Sharpe’s and Plewman’s conversation, Lucas states, “Noble Sharpe said
that Miss Trainor called him two or three times in 1956 and told him that she
and her father were at the station when [Churchill] returned with the casket.”
He also notes, “She also at another time told him that she and her father were
present when the body was exhumed." </div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt;">
Given
their hearsay nature, we should not give too much significance to Lucas’
comments. They are, however, consistent with the conclusions about Sharpe’s
records reached above. As in Sharpe’s notes, Lucas’ comments indicate that Trainor spoke
to Sharpe several times, although it is not clear whether these conversations
all took place in 1956 or not. Lucas’ record of what Sharpe claimed about the
calls further suggests that Trainor’s testimony might have been deeply, and
perhaps to Sharpe, obviously flawed. If the suggestion that Trainor witnessed
Thomson’s coffin being loaded on the train on July 19th lacks for evidence, the
suggestion that Trainor was present when Thomson’s body was exhumed on the
night of July 18th is even less plausible. To be present on the night of the 18<sup>th</sup>
would have required Trainor to have returned to Canoe Lake from Scotia Junction almost immediately after
speaking with the Thomson family and the Huntsville undertaker. This is physically
possible, but no 1917 record mentioning the trip or Trainor’s presence at Canoe
Lake on July 18<sup>th</sup> or 19th has ever been produced. Neither the
letters Trainor wrote to the Thomson family in 1917 nor Mark Robinson’s daily
diary record Trainor’s presence at Canoe Lake on July 18<sup>th</sup> or 19<sup>th</sup>.
The claim only begins to appear in 1968, and only in documents produced by Dr. Sharpe, or reporting Dr.
Sharpe’s claims. If Trainor was at Canoe Lake on July 19th or 20th, it is inconceivable that Trainor did not refer to such an important experience in any of her 1917 correspondence with the Thomson family, and that no one at Canoe Lake would refer to her presence for the exhumation or departure of Thomson's corpse in documents written at the time.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt;">
<h3>
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Conclusions: </b></h3>
</div>
Clearly,
Dr. Noble Sharpe’s notes regarding his 1950s telephone conversations with
Winnifred Trainor suffer from inconsistencies. More importantly, the testimony
from Winnifred Trainor recorded in these notes contradicts the evidence we have
from 1917. If Sharpe’s notes about Trainor’s testimony are accurate, then they
very likely reflect Trainor’s errors or lies.<br />
<b><br /></b>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt;">
<b>Where do these observations leave the suggestion that Winnifred Trainor and Tom Thomson were engaged? As I suggest in <i><a href="https://www.dundurn.com/books/Many-Deaths-Tom-Thomson" target="_blank">The Many Deaths of Tom Thomson</a></i>, hearsay and poorly-grounded speculation has come to dominate and displace evidence-based
claims about Thomson’s death, particularly since the 1970s. In talk about
whether Thomson and Trainor were engaged we have been offered gossip, guesses,
faulty memories, and perhaps, as Sharpe’s notes about Trainor’s testimony suggest,
lies. Certainly, Trainor’s claims of 1956, at least as recorded by Sharpe, don’t
prove anything about Thomson’s marital status. They do, however, indicate
something about the weaknesses of testimony made long after the events in question,
even by those who might have been involved in Thomson’s case in 1917.
</b><br />
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---<br />
<br />
All of the links for this post direct back to excerpts of transcribed historical documents provided on the website <a href="http://www.canadianmysteries.ca/sites/thomson/home/indexen.html">Death On A Painted Lake: The Tom Thomson Tragedy</a>. Gregory Klages was Research Director for the site, launched by the Great Unsolved Mysteries in Canadian History project in 2008. Klages is the author of the 2016 book, <a href="https://www.dundurn.com/books/Many-Deaths-Tom-Thomson"><i>The Many Deaths of Tom Thomson: Separating Fact from Fiction</i></a> (Dundurn Press).<br />
<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.canadianmysteries.ca/sites/thomson/images/top-banner-en.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.canadianmysteries.ca/sites/thomson/images/top-banner-en.jpg" /></a></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-978559161676091333.post-71482598542000131142017-03-20T10:53:00.000-07:002017-03-24T12:05:32.912-07:00Canadian Historical Review: 'Many Deaths...' is "a welcome addition to the literature"<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: right;">
<a href="http://www.utpjournals.com/image.php?type=A&id=30" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.utpjournals.com/image.php?type=A&id=30" /></a></div>
Meaghan Beaton, a Western Washington University (USA) historian, wrote a review of <i>The Many Deaths of Tom Thomson</i> for the highly-regarded academic journal, <i>Canadian Historical Review</i>.<br />
<br />
Dr. Beaton offers:<br />
"Klages has produced a timely and valuable contribution to the literature on Thomson that certainly will be of interest to historians, artists, and popular audiences."<br />
<br />
"Klages work serves as a valuable reminder to historians about the importance of methodology and the use of primary documents."<br />
<br />
For the full review, see the March 2017 issue of the <i>CHR</i>, Vol. 98, Iss. 1 (pgs. 161-163).<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-978559161676091333.post-49149002438000082292017-02-27T11:55:00.002-08:002017-04-21T06:35:21.086-07:00May 4 & 5 - Wellington Cty. Public Library branches - 'Many Deaths of Tom Thomson' author talks<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.wellington.ca/en/discover/resources/hex7.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.wellington.ca/en/discover/resources/hex7.jpg" height="247" width="320" /></a></div>
<b>Thurs., May 4, 2:00 p.m.</b>
<br />
<a href="http://www.wellington.ca/en/discover/rockwoodbranch.asp">Rockwood Public Library</a>,<br />
85 Christine St., <br />
Rockwood, ON,<br />
N0B 2K0<br />
519-856-4851
<b> </b><br />
<br />
<b>Thurs., May 4, 7:00 p.m.</b><br />
<a href="http://www.wellington.ca/en/discover/fergusbranch.asp" target="_blank">Fergus Public Library</a>,<br />
190 St. Andrew St., <br />
Fergus, ON<br />
N1M 1N5
<b> </b><br />
<br />
<b>Fri., May 5, 10:30 a.m.</b><br />
<a href="http://www.wellington.ca/en/discover/mountforestbranch.asp" target="_blank">Mount Forest Public Library</a>,<br />
118 Main St. North,<br />
Mount Forest, ON<br />
N0G 2L0
<b> </b><br />
<br />
<b>Fri., May 5, 2:30 p.m.</b><br />
<a href="http://www.wellington.ca/en/discover/harristonbranch.asp" target="_blank">Harriston Public Library</a>,<br />
88 Mill St., <br />
Harriston, ON<br />
N0G 1Z0
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0