April 17, 2019 - Marina del Rey Book Club, Toronto

I'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.

Wed., April 17, 6:30 p.m.
http://www.theresidencesofmarinadelrey.ca/

Feb. 6, 2019 - Swansea Historical Society

I'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.

http://swanseahistoricalsociety.ca/

Gregory Klages featured on CBC "Ideas" program about Tom Thomson

Gregory 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.

You can listen here:
https://www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/tom-thomson-100-years-from-now-1.4899152

Nov. 15, 2018 - Talk at the Royal City Men's Club, Guelph

I'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.

https://www.royalcitymensclub.ca/

In-depth interview on "Toronto Mike'd" podcast

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.

Topics touched on include:
- the 'fishing line' story,
- the 'fight' story,
- the birth of the murder theory, and
- tales of Thomson having been in a relationship with Winnifred Trainor.

You can listen here: http://www.torontomike.com/2018/08/toronto_miked_podcast_episode_364.html

In-depth interview on 'Murder Was The Case' Podcast

Murder Was the Case: Episode #34:
'The Art of Dying, Interestingly...'
With @GregoryKlages, historian & author of 'The Many Deaths of Tom Thomson.'

PodBean: http://bit.ly/mwtcTomThomson 
iTunes: http://bit.ly/itunesmwtc

How did David Silcox get Tom Thomson's death so wrong?

The Errors and the Flaws:

How did David Silcox get Tom Thomson’s death so wrong?

In 2017, HarperCollins released a thirtieth anniversary revised edition of David Silcox and Harold Town’s Tom Thomson: The Silence and the Storm. The book offers an abundance of attractive reproductions of Thomson’s art. The text, however, suffers from disappointing and surprising factual errors about Tom Thomson's death.

In the 1970s, Silcox (art critic and former Canada Council Arts Officer), and abstract painter Harold Town collaborated on the book, Tom Thomson: The Silence and the Storm. 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 The Silence & the Storm, 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).

As Town died in 1990, Silcox edited the 2017 volume. Silcox repeats the ‘sprained ankle’ claim in his 2002 book, Tom Thomson: An Introduction to His Life and Art, and again in the 2017 republication of The Silence and The Storm. 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:

“[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."

This sentence offers two easily demonstrated errors about the facts of Thomson’s death.

1) In 1917, Mark Robinson did not record fishing line on Thomson’s corpse.

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.

Robinson’s notes make no mention about Thomson’s corpse having fishing line around one ankle (see his diary entry here, on the website I helped produce in 2008, Death On A Painted Lake: The Tom Thomson Tragedy). 

As I’ve explored at length in another post, 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.

 

2) Mark Robinson never mentioned anything about Thomson having an ankle sprain.

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.

Not only did Mark Robinson not record any mention of fishing line in 1917, he never – not once, in the multiple accounts he produced over 35 years – mentioned Thomson having a sprained ankle. The claim is simply not true. (Read some of his post-1917 accounts here and here, on the Death On A Painted Lake: The Tom Thomson Tragedy website.)

 

Where did the sprained ankle story come from, if not Mark Robinson in 1917?

As I detail in Chapter 8 of The Many Deaths of Tom Thomson, Silcox and Town’s original statement about the sprained ankle was based on testimony offered long after Thomson’s death. The first record we have of the ‘sprained ankle’ story appeared in 1969, not 1917. 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.

In 1973, Elva Henry, another relative of Tom’s, repeated George Jr.’s sprained ankle claim to a researcher working for Silcox and Town (see excerpts from the interview notes here, on the Death On A Painted Lake: The Tom Thomson Tragedy site).

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.

 

How could Silcox get it so wrong in 2017?

Silcox’s 2017 claim clearly shows a lack of attention to the evidence about Thomson’s death, and introduces two more errors into narratives of Tom Thomson’s demise.

How, in the process of editing The Silence and The Storm 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. 

For instance, Robinson’s diary entries are no secret. They were published in Ottelyn Addison’s Tom Thomson: The Algonquin Years (1969). They were repeated in William Little’s The Tom Thomson Mystery (1970). In 2008, photographs and transcriptions of the diary entry in question were published on the website Death On A Painted Lake: The Tom Thomson Tragedy. 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 Tom Thomson exhibition catalogue (2002), as well as on the Death On A Painted Lake site.

Although republication of The Silence and The Storm 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.

Gregory Klages - © 2018

---

Perplexed? Challenged? Interested in reading more?

To read more evidence about Tom Thomson's death, and to learn how story-telling about Thomson's death has diverged further and further from the evidence, read The Many Deaths of Tom Thomson: Separating Fact from Fiction (Dundurn Press, 2016). 

Gregory Klages was Research Director for Death On A Painted Lake: The Tom Thomson Tragedy, part of the international award-winning Great Unsolved Mysteries in Canadian History project. 

Tom Thomson Death Myth #6 - 'Tom Thomson: killed by a German sympathizer'

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 – the model Canadian man – was killed by a rude German-American who sympathized with the ‘Huns’. Smacking of period propaganda and stereotypes, these stories wildly misrepresent the facts.

In 1917, no one suggested that a foreigner murdered Tom Thomson, or even that he had gotten in a fight over the war.

So where does this story originate?

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, “I am of the opinion that [Martin Blecher Jr. ] is a German spy.” 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.

What were Blecher’s ties to Germany?

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.

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 “American German tourist.”

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.

Was Blecher a ‘draft dodger’?

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. She reported a rumour 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!

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, the US War Department would outline Blecher’s draft record 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’.

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.

 

Did Tom and Blecher get in a fight?

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 “there was some ill feeling between Tom and some man in that region”, 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.”

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 “accused the other man of being a deserter from the American Army."

Also in 1970, William Little added to the groundless claims about a fight between Blecher and Thomson. In The Tom Thomson Mystery, 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.

Conclusion:

Suspicions about Martin Blecher Jr. are built upon misrepresentation and errors. In 2010’s Northern Light, Roy MacGregor stated that “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, 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).

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.

Gregory Klages - © 2018
---
Gregory Klages was Research Director for the website Death On A Painted Lake: The Tom Thomson Tragedy, launched by the Great Unsolved Mysteries in Canadian History project in 2008. Klages is the author of the 2016 book, The Many Deaths of Tom Thomson: Separating Fact from Fiction (Dundurn Press).

April 19 - Collingwood Public Library > Author talk & book signing

Many Deaths of Tom Thomson 
Author talk & book signing
Thursday, April 19, 7:00 p.m.  


Collingwood Public Library

55 Ste. Marie Street
Collingwood ON
L9Y 0W6
705-445-1571

McMichael Collection of Canadian Art - 18 Nov. - author talk

Author talk at McMichael Collection of Canadian Art

Nov. 18 - 11:30 a.m.
10365 Islington Ave. Kleinburg, Ontario, Canada
L0J 1C0
Tel: 905.893.1121
Tel: 1.888.213.1121 




Included in General Admission.
Free for members. 

Offered in partnership with York University’s Robarts Centre for Canadian Studies.

 
For more information:
http://mcmichael.com/event/the-many-deaths-of-tom-thomson-separating-facts-from-fiction/

Tom Thomson Death myth #7 - 'Tom Thomson: the reluctant father'

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.

In Tom Thomson Death Myth #8, 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.

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.

As I describe in Tom Thomson Death Myth #8, 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. 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.

The story can really be explored as the thinking of one man, Roy MacGregor, who has advanced and expanded on his theory since 1973.

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.

In his article, “The Great Canoe Lake Mystery”, published in Maclean’s 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.

MacGregor returned to the pregnancy story in 1977. His article, “The Legend”, printed in The Canadian 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.

In 1980, MacGregor followed up his 1970s magazine articles with a novel, Shorelines. The book offers a scenario of what might have transpired if Trainor had been pregnant by Thomson. It was republished in 2002 as Canoe Lake. 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.

Finally, in 2010, in Northern Light: Tom Thomson and the woman who loved him, 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 must have been pregnant. He also includes an interesting disclaimer about Plewman's 1973 claims, noting, "[Plewman] might not have made such actual 'statements', but he certainly had dropped all the necessary hints." (196)

Shortcomings in MacGregor's argument:

MacGregor’s argument is based on wild extrapolation from very thin evidence. Discussing the pregnancy story in 2002, he notes, “I have no proof.” (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?

He is the only person to have ever suggested that Trainor was pregnant. Trainor lived her later years in Huntsville, where MacGregor also spent his childhood. 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.

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.)

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? 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.

Conclusions

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. 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.

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.

Gregory Klages - © 2017
---
Gregory Klages was Research Director for the website Death On A Painted Lake: The Tom Thomson Tragedy, launched by the Great Unsolved Mysteries in Canadian History project in 2008. Klages is the author of the 2016 book, The Many Deaths of Tom Thomson: Separating Fact from Fiction (Dundurn Press).

Tom Thomson death myth #8 - 'Tom Thomson: the reluctant groom'

During the early 1970s, speculation around Tom Thomson’s death gained new momentum. William Little’s 1970 book, The Tom Thomson Mystery seemed to provide strong evidence that Thomson had been murdered. In 1972, a new publication would turn speculation about Thomson’s death in an entirely different direction – suicide.

Charles Plewman arrived at Canoe Lake in mid-July 1917, 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.

In the Canadian Camping article, Plewman described how he had heard from several people that Tom Thomson was engaged in the summer of 1917. His claim echoed gossip that had appeared a few years before, in William Little's The Tom Thomson Tragedy. Plewman, though, derived much different meaning from the gossip than Little. 

William Little's gossip and photos of a married woman

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. 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.

Plewman's gossip

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, according to Fraser (via Plewman), Thomson got 'cold feet'. Trainor, though, was apparently pressing the increasingly hesitant Tom to follow through with matrimony. Plewman related that he had heard Thomson, unable to see a way out of the situation, tried repeatedly to take his own life. Eventually, it seemed, he was successful.

Mark Robinson and engagement gossip

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, “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.

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 I did not see anything to indicate more than ordinary friendship.”

Trainor's perplexing silence

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. 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.

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 the chief forensic investigator for the Ontario Attorney General’s Laboratory. 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 in another post.

Roy MacGregor's unsupported claim

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 Maclean’s article, MacGregor wrote, “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.”

This statement makes 'evidence' out of hearsay. In The Tom Thomson Mystery, William Little related 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, Northern Light, there "is no evidence of any such booking." So much for 'certainty'.

In 2010, MacGregor actually helped to undermine the engagement theory. He convincingly argued in Northern Light 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!

Conclusions

Simply stated, despite the gossip, no evidence has been produced that Tom Thomson was engaged. 

Stories that Trainor was claiming to be engaged to Thomson are gossip, excepting Sharpe's intriguing account from the 1950s. We have no evidence that Thomson booked a honeymoon cabin. (No one even reported this as gossip until more than fifty years after Thomson’s death!) We also don't have any evidence that Trainor was wearing engagement rings before Thomson's death.  

Surveying the shaky origins of the ‘engagement’ story, it must be assessed as lacking any evidence.  

The evolution of talk about engagement, the 180 degree turnabout from Robinson’s 1930 denial of the ‘engagement’ gossip to MacGregor's bald-faced assertion 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.   
It certainly doesn't provide any support to speculation that Tom Thomson committed suicide to avoid being married.

Gregory Klages - © 2017
---
Gregory Klages was Research Director for the website Death On A Painted Lake: The Tom Thomson Tragedy, launched by the Great Unsolved Mysteries in Canadian History project in 2008. Klages is the author of the 2016 book, The Many Deaths of Tom Thomson: Separating Fact from Fiction (Dundurn Press).

"Many Deaths of Tom Thomson" Toronto author talks, October 2017

Toronto author talks and book signings - October 2017

Wed., Oct. 18, 2017
7:00 p.m.
High Park Public Library 
228 Roncesvalles Avenue, Toronto, ON  
M6R 2L7 
416-393-7671 

Thurs., Oct. 19, 2017 
6:30 p.m.
College/Shaw Public Library
766 College Street, Toronto, ON
M6G 1C4
416-393-7668

"Many Deaths of Tom Thomson" author talk - Shelburne Public Library, Sunday, Oct. 15

Author talk and book signing - 
Sunday, October 15, 2:00 p.m.
 
Shelburne Public Library
201 Owen Sound Street,
Shelburne, Ontario
L9V 3L2
--MAP--

Tel: 519.925.2168
Email: info@shelburnelibrary.ca

Tom Thomson death myth #9 - 'Tom died over a debt'

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.

In the 1970s, it was proposed that Tom Thomson died in a fight over a debt. The story - dependent on gossip and demonstrable errors - is wrong.

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).

Although the roots of the debt story can be found in evidence recorded in 1917, 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 The Canadian magazine. In the article, MacGregor shared comments he claimed to have been told by Crombie.

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 since early April 1917.) 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.

In his 2010 book, Northern Light, MacGregor added to the story, stating that Winnie Trainor had told Margaret Thomson (Tom’s sister) that, “a $250 loan Tom had made to Fraser two years earlier had not yet been fully paid back.” *

An unpaid debt, a fight, murder, and a hidden corpse... compelling anecdotes that make a tantalizing story. The story, as told in MacGregor’s 1977 and 2010 accounts, directly contradicts the evidence from 1917.

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, Margaret Thomson, in Toronto. They discussed Tom’s life, and of course, his death. In early September 1917, Margaret wrote Tom’s patron, Dr. James MacCallum, sharing with him what she had learned from Trainor.

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, “she had asked Tom this spring if he ever got that money, and he said he got it all but in very small amounts.” **

Tom Harkness, Tom Thomson’s brother-in-law and executor of Tom’s estate, pursued the issue with Fraser in September 1917, asking, “did you pay Tom for the canoes he bought for you and when.” [sic]

The same month, Winnie reported to Tom's brother, George, what she had told Margaret, stating, “Tom said this spring while at our house that he had loaned Fraser ^$250.⁰⁰ for canoes, but that he had got it all back but in little bits though.”

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.

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.

MacGregor's statement that Trainor claimed the debt had not been repaid - is simply wrong. Trainor’s letter clearly indicates the debt was repaid. (See Notes below.)

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 excerpts from the letter available freely on the world wide web. 

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.

(For instance, in 2018, John Little claimed in Who Killed Tom Thomson? that, “[Fraser] had evidently paid a good portion of the loan back, but there was still some money owed.”)

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NOTES:

* MacGregor's statement can be found in Chapter 9 of Northern Light: The Story of Tom Thomson and The Woman Who Loved Him. For more, see the note below. Once again, he writes: "a $250 loan Tom had made to Fraser two years earlier had not yet been fully paid back.”

** The quoted passage from Margaret Thomson's 9 Sept. 1917 letter directly contradicts MacGregor's 2010 account of what the letter says. Once again, she writes, "[Trainor] had asked Tom this spring if he ever got that money, and he said he got it all but in very small amounts.”

Gregory Klages - © 2017
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Gregory Klages was Research Director for the website Death On A Painted Lake: The Tom Thomson Tragedy, launched by the Great Unsolved Mysteries in Canadian History project in 2008. Klages is the author of the 2016 book, The Many Deaths of Tom Thomson: Separating Fact from Fiction (Dundurn Press).

Tom Thomson death myth #10 - "Fishing line = murder."

A popular story relates that Tom Thomson’s body was found with fishing line wound around one ankle. A popular interpretation is that the line proves someone tried to hide Thomson’s corpse by tying a weight to his body before sinking the body in the lake.  

The fishing line story (and the conspiracy theory spun from it) is not supported by the evidence we have available about Thomson's corpse.

When Tom Thomson’s body was discovered in July 1917, two men examined his remains: a doctor holidaying in Algonquin Park, and an Algonquin Park Ranger. At the time, neither man recorded seeing fishing line around any part of Thomson’s body. The claim that fishing line was found on Thomson's body was first made in the 1930s - thirteen years after Thomson's death - by Park Ranger, Mark Robinson. Robinson's claim was never corroborated by any other witnesses, though. Robinson also never explained why his 1917 notes don't mention the fishing line. Complicating his claim further, in the 1950s, Robinson offered yet another version of his testimony: he claimed he had noted the fishing line in 1917 (which we know is false), reported different 'facts' about the fishing line than he had in the 1930s, and stated his conclusion about Thomson’s cause of death that was different from what he stated in 1917 or 1930.

All of these facts strongly suggest the ‘fishing line story’ is suspect, and raises the prospect that one of the pillars supporting murder theories is weak.

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We know that Tom Thomson’s body was discovered on the morning of July 16, 1917.

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 (worth noting: 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 Thomson's remains.

For the July 16 entry, Robinson states that Thomson’s body was discovered floating in Algonquin Park's Canoe Lake about 9 a.m. He writes that George Rowe and ‘Lowrie’ Dixon, “took same and brought it to shore.”

The following day, 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. Nowhere in these notes – nor anywhere else in his 1917 diary entries – is there mention that he found a fishing line around any part of Thomson’s corpse.

A transcription of Howland’s 1917 notes, provided to researcher Blodwen Davies by the Nipissing Crown Attorney’s office in the 1930s, doesn’t include any mention of suspicious fishing line 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, doesn’t mention fishing line.

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.

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.

Only one person - Mark Robinson - ever claimed that fishing line was found on Tom Thomson's corpse. Robinson mentioned the line for the first time in a 1930 letter to Blodwen Davies, thirteen years after Thomson’s death. At this time, Robinson suggested the line was not Thomson’s regular fishing line.

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, in the early 1950s, he added details to his story about the fishing line. 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 his diary says nothing of the sort; it doesn’t mention fishing line at all!

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 skepticism about Robinson's claims  – particularly those furthest from the experiences he describes - is necessary.

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?

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 suggests that Robinson’s suspicions were not raised, either because the fishing line had a reasonable explanation, or because he never saw it all.

Gregory Klages - © 2017

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Perplexed? Challenged? Interested in reading more?

To read more evidence about Tom Thomson's death, and to learn how story-telling about Thomson's death has diverged further and further from the evidence, read The Many Deaths of Tom Thomson: Separating Fact from Fiction (Dundurn Press, 2016). 

Gregory Klages was Research Director for Death On A Painted Lake: The Tom Thomson Tragedy, part of the international award-winning Great Unsolved Mysteries in Canadian History project.