T OM THOMSON’S T ORONT O NEIGHBOURHOODS © 2010 Angie Littlefield E - edition 2010 By Angie Littlefield, angielittlefield.com E – edition R evised and updated, September 2016 P rint edition 2016 T oronto, Canada P ublished by Angie Littlefield All queries should be addressed to T om Thomson ’s T oronto Neigh- bourhoods,  Angie Littlefield, 72 Baronial Crt, T oronto, ON , Canada M1C 3J7 Editor , cover and interior design: Mary Cook All Rights R eserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or in any means – by electronic, mechanical, photocopying , recording or oth- erwise – without prior written permission. This publication is not -for - profit and intended for educational use.

T om Thomson’ s T oronto Neighbourhoods T om Thomson (1877–1917) cr eated some of Canada’ s most r ecognizable art fr om sketches made in Algonquin Park 1912–1917. His association with Ontario’ s north is well known. T om Thomson’ s 12 years in T or onto ar e less known.   W ith map and backpack I head off from Union Station. I hope to find traces of T om Thomson ’s lost T oronto years before he travelled to Algonquin P ark in 1912 and be- fore he moved into the R osedale V alley Studio Building in 1914. I know he lived in boarding houses, had a girlfriend, went to Mendelssohn Choir concerts, the library , and the C.N .E . He took art lessons, worked for photoengraving companies, went on outdoor sketching trips, hiked, snow shoed and above all, demonstrated he was a family man. I want to reclaim this T om for T oronto. L eith, in the Owen Sound area, lays claim to T om ’s growing years. Chatham and Seattle were short stops on the journey to the, ‘true north strong and free’. T om Thomson spent most of his adult life in T oronto. T om arrived in 1905 to a T oronto reeling from   the aftershock of the great fire of 1904: 100 buildings and 140 businesses destroyed. The fire put 6,000 people out of work at a time when T oronto had 200,000 residents. The downtown looked bombed. Buildings on both sides of Bay Street from The Esplanade to north of W ellington were in ruins. F irefighters couldn ’t contain the fire, stopped by the maze of wires from electricity , telegraphs and tele- phones.

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T om Thomson ’s T oronto Neighbourhoods

W ellington Street East, looking west April 1904 City of T oronto Archives Series 402, Item 5

The downtown T om saw at this time was habitually blanketed by black coal smoke from factories, rail yards and ships at the waterfront. Sludge from the slaughterhouses flowed into the Don River . The fortunes made in mining and manufacturing showed up as mansions, one of which Holwood on Queen ’s P ark Crescent i  was built in 1901 – 02 by money Joseph Flavelle accumulated in meat - packing . F rom 1905 – 1908, T om boarded on Elm Street on the eastern border of St. John ’s W ard, a working class area densely inhabited by new immigrants. The block closest to Y onge where T om lived bustled with the activi- ties of the Elm Street Methodist Church and school, the Y .W .C.A., the New Jerusalem Synagogue, St. George’s Hall ii , which housed the St. George’s Society that provided for the city ’s poor , Moriarity ’s School of Physical Culture which was also home to the Good L uck Athletic Club and St. George’s Rink; The W omen ’s Christian T em- perance Union which ran the W illard F rances Home for Girls and the Central Flower Mission from the same address and at number 49, the John L abatt Bottling W orks. T om ’s block on Elm was home to a dressmaker , printer , barber , translator , dentist, phrenologist, physician, plumber , upholsterer , music teacher and even two sculptors. There were house painters at number 21, a grocer at number 53, a druggist at 55½ and a block west a branch of the Bank of T oronto and Edward Squirrel, liquors. T om boarded at 54 with Joseph R obert and Sara Thursa W atson. Joseph was a harness maker whose shop was at 780 Y onge Street.

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Elm Street Methodist Church    Owen Staples L andmarks of T oronto    J .R oss R obertson | www .archive.org

As I surveyed T om ’s street I noted what survived: The Y .W .C.A., St. George’s Hall, a few houses and a remnant of the House of Industry at 87 Elm. The House of Industry , like St. George’s Hall, provided for the needy crowded into slum-like St. John ’s W ard. Although T om lived modestly , he was employed. By June 1905 he was in the art Department of L egg Brothers Photoengraving at 5 Jordan   Street, in a pocket near Y onge and W ellington spared by the great fire. W ith T om ’s previous photoengraving experiences in Seattle, brothers W illiam, George and Archibald L egg had employed T om as a senior artist. T om was so proud of his new position that on one occasion when his sister Minnie visited en route from Owen Sound to St. Catharines, where she attended Demill L adies’ College, he took her to each person in the L egg Brothers Art Department xxiv   to explain what he was doing . He also took her to the tea room in George McConkey ’s R estaurant at 27 King Street W est where according to Minnie he liked the atmosphere,   the dainty teas and the class of peo- ple who frequented the establishment . T om had come to T oronto by himself in 1905, but, he was certainly not alone. He had regularly visited the home of his ‘uncle’ W illiam Brodie iii   while he was growing up, drawn to his vivacious cousins, Jessamine, Lil- lie, Daisy , ‘Sweet W illiam ’, R ose, Vi- olet and V erbena. Brodie, a dentist by profession but a passionate natu- ralist at heart, lived in a tradesper- son area at 436 P arliament Street

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T oronto Don Jail | June 4, 1899 F onds 200; F ormer City of T oronto fonds –  Series 376

T oronto Don Jail | F ebruary 8, 2010 Mary Cook ©

with a yard full of wild flowers. The Brodie’s four cows, kept across the Don River , were milked by the prisoners at the Central Jail, now called the Don. T om found a kindred spirit in his uncle who tromped through the Don ’s countless ravines gathering plant samples on legendary Sunday walks that wore out most family members. T om, who grew up wander- ing the woodlands around L eith, cherished the walks which were regularly followed by talks with family and friends. According to Thomson scholar Joan Murray , T om learned the art of finding and preserving specimens so well that he was commis- sioned to collect specimens for high school teacher David White. As a youth, T om scoured two of Uncle Brodie’s favourite collecting spots for samples — High P ark and the Scarbor- ough Bluffs. By 1905, T om ’s flower garden of cousins was married but T om was still drawn to the aegis of his uncle’s circle. Brodie, by then consid- ered the first P rovincial Biologist, was friends with Ernest Thompson Seton iv , even after the tragic death of Brodie’s son ‘Sweet W illiam ’ v . (Seton had organized the sample collecting trip in 1883 on which W illie drowned.) Seton was a keen supporter of Brodie and the Nat- ural History Society and the support was mutual. F or example, Brodie read Seton ’s lecture on the striped gopher to the Society flourishing two skins, drawings and illustrations that Seton had sent from Manitoba. Also in Brodie’s circle was Owen Staples who lived across from the Brodies on the east side of the Don River at 69 Hogarth Avenue in a house constructed with discarded bricks from the Don V alley Brick

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High P ark, T oronto, c1906 Chuckmanothercollectionvolume3. blogspot.com/

W orks. Staples, an artist -illustrator first for the Mail and later for The Evening T elegram  was a member of the Ontario Society of Artists (O .S .A.) and had published a six -volume edition of L andmarks of T oronto . He sketched and painted flowers and animals in the Don V alley and illustrated two of Brodie’s scientific articles about plant galls. Staples, was a founding member of T oronto’s Mendelssohn Choir and a magnet for artists of all kinds. Whenever possible, T om, who loved music, attended the choir ’s concerts or gave tickets to rela- tives so that they too could enjoy the finest choral music T oronto had to offer . Seton and Staples were key figures in the intellectual life of the Brodie home and thus by extension, major influences on T om. The ideas and influences of the Brodie circle were significant in T om ’s life, but, they didn ’t keep T om from visiting Owen Sound. Since L egg Brothers employed him at the princely sum of $11 per week (later $15) he headed off for quick family visits. A family mem- ber recalled that he’d take the Saturday train, leaving as soon as he finished work. He’d arrive late at night, trekking home in the dark summoning his family with a whistle. His sister Minnie later wrote that T om ’s frequent visits home were occasions of excitement and re- joicing especially among the children of the older members of his family by whom he was greatly loved. Back in T oronto he regularly ate chop suey and took evening art classes at the Central Ontario School of Art and Design at 165 King Street W est where W illiam Cruickshank an O .S .A. member of- fered a course called “Drawing from the Antique and from Life”. T om ’s

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Art Gallery at T oronto Exhibition, c1911 R obert Little Collection

friend Ben Jackson xxv  later noted that T om had studied from life and the antique in art school; he remembered Cruickshank as the in- structor . Until 1909, 165 King Street was also the address for the O .S .A. which organized annual exhibitions on King Street and at the C.N .E . The O .S .A. was known to T om as they had sponsored an exhibition of 100 art works in Owen Sound in 1894 when T om was 17 – years – old. Naturally he also knew the O .S .A. and the T oronto Art Museum through Owen Staples and W illiam Cruikshank.   W ith his expanded interest in fine arts, T om purchased a leather - bound pocket book for sketches. On visits home between 1905 and 1907 he filled it with 22 works among which were drawings of his nephews Gordon Harkness and George Thomson II (who was visit- ing from Seattle). He did pen drawings of the Harkness F arm and The Old W illiam McK een Home, Owen Sound , situated just across from his parents’ R ose Hill farm, penned a self-portrait and started his first experiments with oils. Sufficiency ,  an oil on board, dates from 1905. I first felt T om ’s presence in T oronto while looking for the location where he took art classes at 165 King Street. In T om ’s time, the corner of King and Simcoe Street was known as the F our Nations Corner: L egislation, Ed- ucation, Damnation and Salvation. The cor- ners were home to Government House, Upper Canada College, St. Andrew ’s P res- byterian Church, and to a popular pub called the British Hotel and T avern.

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St. Andrew ’s P resbyterian Church, c1913 chuckmanothercollectionvolume3.blogspot.com

The present day St. Andrew ’s, harkening back to 1875, arose out of an 1830 meeting to or- ganize a Scot ’s kirk in the T own of Y ork. Knowing T om ’s deeply reli- gious Scottish upbringing I was drawn to believe that he could have stood in the comfortable church aisle where I did, es pe- cially when he first arrived in T oronto. I could almost feel him there.   Once outside in the clear light of day , I realized T om could as easily have frequented the British T avern that once stood across the street. St. Andrew ’s and part of the first home of Upper Canada College still remain. Also nearby at Y onge and Adelaide is the street sign for Grand Opera L ane. In the early 1900s The Grand Opera House featured vaudeville and melodrama. As I looked up at the sign, alien amid skyscrapers, I wondered, did T om go? T om loved con- certs and the theatre and there were many opportunities in his work - a- day neighbourhood: The Crystal P alace Theatre at 141 Y onge, the Gayety at 78 Richmond, the Majestic at 25 Adelaide, the P rincess at 167 King Street W est and as of August 1907, the R oyal Alexandra Theatre at 260 King Street W est. vi   I was seeing bits and pieces of the T oronto through which T om tra- versed as he was getting established. Y et even as that T oronto had changed significantly from 1905 to now , it was changing rapidly in T om ’s time. By 1907, horse and carriage traffic increasingly shared Y onge Street with street car lines and automobiles. Buildings around ten stories had sprung up in the vacuum created by the great fire.

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R oyal Alexandra Theatre, King Street, c1909 chuckmanothercollectionvolume3.blogspot.com

In 1908, art critic Augustus Bridle, founded The Arts and L etters Club which was to play an important part in T om ’s future. When this gentlemen ’s group first met at 57 Adelaide Street W est. on the top floor of the Court House building , artist L awren Harris, Augustus V ogt, the founder of the Mendelssohn Choir and architect Eden Smith were some its first members. Dr . James MacCallum, patron of the arts, joined soon thereafter . These early T oronto years were a time of family changes for T om. His sisters Minnie and L ouisa had decided to marry brothers W illiam and James Henry of L eith. L ouisa married in F ebruary 1907 and Minnie in December . Early in 1908 the two Henry couples headed off to farm in P ense, Saskatchewan. T om ’s eldest brother George had sold his Seattle business college, moved to New Y ork and started classes at the Art Students’ L eague—the same place where family friend Ernest Thompson Seton had studied many years before while he did drawings for the American Museum of Natural History In 1907 George Thomson had one art work accepted into the Na- tional Academy of Design Annual Exhibition in New Y ork and an- other into a group exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago. This artistic success for his business - oriented lawyer brother , who gave up everything for art, spurred T om on. After all, George had scant art background, whereas he, T om, had worked at Maring and L add as a pen artist and engraver , at the Seattle Engraving Company and at L egg Brothers Photoengraving as a senior artist. W illiam Cruickshank, his teacher at the Central Ontario School of Design had favourably reviewed his oil of a man leading a team of horses, a painting he gave to his sister Minnie two days before her wedding in

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Y oung Man with T eam of Horses , c1907 Thomson Art Gallery

1907. W ith four years of commercial art experience, and art talent lauded by his family and teacher , T om was the Thomson brother who should be an artist. T om stepped up his artistic experimentation in 1907 and 1908. T om also took some new directions. F ollowing his teenage tutelage in Uncle Brodie’s family discussions, the adult T om joined the discussions around Dr . Albert Durrant W atson, poet, astronomer and mystic who by all accounts possessed a mind inquisitive about all forms of belief and who led vibrant discussions about spirituality and the arts. Dr . W atson practiced and resided at 10 Euclid Avenue. Sis- ter Minnie, who acknowledged that T om had quiet moods, added that he dearly loved an argument and generally held his own in a battle of wits. Dr . W atson ’s works The Sovereignty of Ideals (1904), The Sovereignty of Character (1908)  and later works of poetry would have fueled much discussion. T om ’s discussions were grounded in reading . An avid reader since youth, T om borrowed books and magazines from the Central Circu- lating Library vii  on the northeast corner of Church and Adelaide and read them late into the night as his father had. Like his mother , T om was partial to poetry but he was also said to have had a keen inter- est in the Studio  arts magazine. One of T om ’s favourite poets was W illiam W ilfred Campbell whose collected poems appeared in 1905 and whose lines T om had illustrated. Thus, with work, family , friends, reading and hiking T om was leading a rich life in T oronto. Then, probably in 1905 there was an en- hancement. T om started keeping company with Elizabeth McCar- nen, a young lady of Irish descent who worked in the dressmaking department of the T . Eaton Company .

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W illiam W ilfred Campbell c1919 | McClelland & Stewart

Elizabeth came from the farming community of Phelpston. She was T om ’s first social companion after Alice Elinor L ambert who T om had met in Seattle at his boarding house when she 18 and he 27. Whatever happened in the sum- mer of 1904 during their board- ing house romance, (the scuttlebutt had it that Alice sup- pressed a giggle at his marriage proposal), T om abruptly left Seattle and composed himself at home  in Owen Sound before venturing forth to his new life in T oronto. T om probably met the lively and artsy Elizabeth while dancing . T om loved to dance. The Thomson home in L eith was the scene of many musical evenings where one visitor later recalled that it was a great place to dance. “I can still see T om Thomson dancing .” viii  His sister Minnie stated that T om would sometimes make a special trip home from T oronto to attend a dance in the old hall with the L eith and Annan crowd of his youth. Matched up with Elizabeth in T oronto, there were the dance pavilions on Centre Island and at Hanlan ’s P oint and in the winter , hotels had ballrooms—from the classy Crystal R oom of the King Edward, built in 1903 to the Glad- stone on Queen Street W est. W ith T om and Elizabeth ’s shared interest in the arts, there were exhi- bitions to see at the Art Museum of T oronto which T om knew from his art lessons at the same location and at the C.N .E . According to one story , T om took Elizabeth to a C.N .E sideshow of African natives in their natural surroundings where the mesmerized T om stayed put

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The T oronto P ublic Library main branch (the old Mechanics’ Institute) on Church Street, c1924 www .en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F ile:P ublic_Library_on_Church_Street.jpg

for the next three and a half hours. Afterwards T om returned to study the natives three more times! After four pleasant establishing years in T oronto, 1908–1909 held significant turning points. In 1908, T om moved briefly to the board- ing house of Elizabeth McCarnen ’s sister on P embroke Street xxvi and then to Esther Plewes at 99 Gerrard Street East—now in the midst of the R yerson University Campus. As I contemplated the few residen- tial buildings left on Gerrard, I watched a young man leave what was obviously a boarding house. That young man conjured up the image of T om dashing by such buildings on the way to his new job at Grip Engravers, Limited where he’d started to work under the di- rection of J .E .H . MacDonald late in 1908. J .E .H . MacDonald, a founder of the later Group of Seven, worked at Grip Inc. Engravers before going to England; he returned there as senior artist in 1907. Back in T oronto, MacDonald designed and helped build a modest cottage at 475 Quebec Avenue in the High P ark area xxvii —quite a hike from his place of employment. Since Grip was at 48 T emperance Street, T om could either walk or take the streetcar down Y onge. Grip ’s Art Director , Albert H . R ob- son described T om ’s request for employment saying that he had arrived clean cut and dressed in a dark blue serge suit with a gray flannel shirt. “He handed me a bundle of his work and asked if there was an opening in the art department.” ix  Obviously the port- folio was meritorious as T om

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Hanlan ’s P oint V iew from The Dips,  c1910 T o the right are the Circle Swing and Dance Hall chuckmanothercollection.blogspot.com cec.chebucto.org/ClosP ark/HanP oint.html

joined a talented group of commer- cial artists at Grip who shared a keen interest in the fine arts and the out- doors. Among them were Ben Jack- son, T om McL ean and F rank Johnston. In 1908 MacDonald and T om McL ean had works in the annual O .S .A. exhibit. Beside new beginnings, 1909 held painful closings. T om ’s beloved Uncle Brodie who had had the lenses of both his failing eyes re- moved by Dr . James MacCallum, in an attempt to salvage some vi- sion, died in August. He was buried in the Necropolis Cemetery in an unmarked grave overlooking the Don V alley . Brodie’s loss was matched by another when Elizabeth McCarnen left for Phelpston to help raise the children of siblings who had lost spouses. W ith both Uncle Brodie and Elizabeth gone, T om turned more to companionship through work. He started going on outings with fel- low Grip employees. Over the next two years T om went to the Hum- ber V alley with F rank Johnston, to L ake Scugog with Ben Jackson and with others to W eston, L ambton Mills and Y ork Mills. Early Thomson chronicler , Blodwen Davies, noted that one of Thomson ’s first experiences in sketching from nature was by Scarlett ’s R oad near the L ambton Golf Club. The painting , On the Don River , from this period, is marked 99 Gerrard Street on its rear . Davies related a family incident that showed how sensitive T om was about these early artistic ventures. When T om and his eldest brother were home in Owen Sound for a family visit, T om was disturbed by George’s comments on one of his works. “ At two o’clock he got up

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T oronto Exhibition, c1911 R obert Little Collection

and dressed and slipped out of the house. By breakfast time he was back with a sketch that answered his brother ’s criticism.” x Sensitive as he was to criticism, T om had a wonderful support group at Grip. Between 1910 and 1911, W illiam Smithson Broadhead and Arthur Lismer , both from Sheffield, England joined Grip as did F ranklin Carmichael. R obson described the Grip as being a place full of fun and good spirits. In 1910 T om painted V iew from the W in- dow at Grip . Symbolically T om ’s experiences with Grip companions now provided the views through which he saw the world. xi   In 1910 T om ’s Grip supervisor and mentor , J .E .H . MacDonald was elected an O .S .A. member and had four works accepted whose ti- tles alone indicate their influence on T om ’s development: Clearing A fter R ain – Magnetawan River , October A fternoon, A Grey Day and W ind, R ain, Sunshine.  F rank Johnston and A.Y . Jackson were also represented in the 1910 O .S .A. show . T om was as popular with the Grip crowd for his fishing , singing and mandolin playing as for his sketching . Ben Jackson, himself a capa- ble fisherman claimed that he’d never seen anyone who could cast a fly with the ease and precision of Thomson. Ben and T om took trips to go lunge fishing in L ake Scugog and trout fishing in T om ’s favourite streams about which his famous fisherman father John Thomson had probably told him. Blodwen Davies, who extensively interviewed T om ’s family and colleagues after his death, said that Thomson with his mandolin was one of the best loved figures in that adventuring little company . The Grip crowd kept T om busy , but, it wasn ’t his only social life. T om had befriended fellow border Dr . John McR uer at 54 Elm Street and at 99 Gerrard he was

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Scarboro Bluffs chuckmanothercollection. blogspot.com

friends with lodger Edgar Burke xii , an engineer with the Canadian National R ailway . T om was best man at the marriage of John and Edythe McR uer in Brampton in 1909 and was invited to attend Edgar and F rances Burke’s wedding out west in 1915. On a painting trip to Huntsville area in 1910, T om visited the newly- wed McR uers, John and Edythe, at their home on Main Street where John ’s brother James was staying with them recuperating from a bout with tuberculosis. T om eagerly took the McR uer brothers to his room in the Dominion Hotel where, “ he opened his pack and excit- edly spread out on the bed four feet of his brilliant sketches …. The air in the room was heady with the scent of oil paints.” xiv  James McR uer , later Chief Justice of Ontario, was allowed to pick two paintings which he proudly displayed in all his offices thereafter . A few days later , on the same weekend, James McR uer recalled that he, T om, John and Edythe took the train north, ostensibly to scout locations for T om ’s paintings, but really just for an outing . T om, who was an eager photographer at that time, took separate photos of James and John McR uer - James wearing his bowler hat standing in a field and John at the Scotia Junction train station. Throughout these five to six years in T oronto, T om continued to be drawn to the outdoors in all sea- sons. His hikes ranged east to the Scarborough Bluffs and into his family ’s ancestral lands in Durham, north up the Don V alley to the Brodie’s Craigieburn farm in Whitchurch and west into Mis- sissauga. L awren Harris described T om getting his winter exercise by snow shoeing through T oronto’s half-wild ravines at night.

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Sydenham Mutual F ire Ins. Co. c1911 poster

T om also continued to interact with his family . When his brother F raser , a haberdasher in Montreal, visited in 1910, he and T om went to see an exhibition–probably at the Arts and L etters Club as J .E .H . MacDonald actively promoted the club and its events. F raser quizzed his brother as to why he didn ’t like a particular piece and T om replied that the artist had to paint as he saw the scene if it was going to be natural and last. According to T om, there had been too much artifice in the work. In 1911 T om went to the Arts and L etters Club to see MacDonald’s sketches and met L awren Harris there. On a family visit to Owen Sound, T om created a poster for his brother -in-law T om Harkness for the Sydenham Mutual Insurance Company and he did a watercolour of his favourite niece, Jesse Harkness, who would in later years visit him in T oronto staying at the Y .W .C.A. On another 1911 trip to Owen Sound with Ben Jackson who was Grip ’s specialist in tourism publicity , he painted Near Owen Sound  and On the Sydenham River .   By the time 1912 rolled around, the life T om had established in T oronto was about to change. F ellow Grip artist T om McL ean had been a prospector , fire ranger and surveyor in the north before he developed his vocation in art. His constant paeans of praise about Algonquin P ark stirred T om and Ben Jackson. T om and Ben were as keen for the fishing as for the sketching . T om McL ean provided the two with a letter of introduction to Algonquin P ark Superintendent G .W . Bartlett and in May 1912 off they went.

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Near Owen Sound , c1911 www .tomthomson.org

Buoyed by his previous painting ex- peditions with Ben Jackson to L ake Scugog in 1911 where he’d painted Near L ake Scugog  and Evening L ake Scugog ,  T om planned to be on the road from May to September 1912 — first with Ben and then with W illiam Broadhead. T om gave up his lodgings with Esther Plewes and started a series of temporary lodg- ings, the first with Noah L uke at 54 Alexander Street. After the Algonquin trip with Ben where he visited the Canoe L ake Station and T ea L ake Dam, T om moved temporarily to 119 Summer- hill Avenue, where Grip co -workers W illiam Smithson Broadhead and Arthur Lismer boarded. The Sheffield men still glowed from the success of their 1912 O .S .A. showing that spring where they had six works accepted between the two of them. Shortly thereafter T om and Broadhead travelled in the area of the Mississagi F orest R eserve west of Sudbury from July to September . En route they stopped in Huntsville and on the way back in Owen Sound. Back from these heady travels into the wild, T om moved to the home of Martha McK enzie at 51 Breadalbane Street. The widow ’s rooms may have been recommended to him by the R everend W illiam W il- son of the Elm Street Methodist Church as the reverend lived at 42 Breadalbane. R ev . W ilson ’s church had been T om ’s neighbour dur- ing his four years on Elm Street. When I finally found the very short street called Breadalbane, it was one huge empty lot awaiting development. By contrast all of Sum- merhill was intact. As I started musing about neighbourhood sur-

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Near L ake Scugog , c1911 www .tomthomson.org

vival, the mail person interrupted to ask why I was staring at number 119 Summerhill. I had been trying to figure out of which windows T om, Broadhead or Lismer might have looked. Barely a month after his return from the north, in October 1912, T om joined fellow artists who left Grip to continue to be under the inspirational leadership of Art Director Albert R obson. R obson had gone to R ous and Mann P ress at 72 Y ork Street. T om started at R ous and Mann October 16, 1912 as an artist at 75 cents an hour work- ing 46.5 hours per week. R obson described T om ’s arrival at work at R ous and Mann in October 1912. He had strolled up from the Station in his woodsman outfit carrying a bundle of sketches. After leaving the works for inspection, R obson and the fellow artists he knew from Grip urged T om to paint one into a large canvas. R obson gave T om the keys to use the studio at R ous and Mann on the weekends and evenings. And thus, A Northern L ake  came into being . Also in October 1912 T om met Dr . James MacCallum at J .E .H . MacDonald’s studio in the Imperial Chambers at 32 Adelaide Street,   a studio MacDonald shared with J .W . Beatty . T om knew of Dr . Mac- Callum as the ophthalmologist who had operated on his Uncle Brodie’s eyes; now he saw him as an art patron. Although Dr . MacCallum met T om at MacDonald’s stu- dio, he had heard of him from the summer of 1912 when MacCallum ’s friend Colonel Mason and his two nephews had come upon T om and Broadhead near the whitewater rapids on the Audinandong River salvaging sketches that had gone into the water when their canoe had tipped. MacCallum, intrigued by the stories of the pictures, and by the tall, intense man he had met at

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P ortrait of the Artist ’s Niece (Jessie Harkness) c1910

MacDonald’s, determined to take a look at these works. MacCallum knew that T om boarded on Isabella Street. As he didn ’t have a num- ber , he rang all the door bells on Isabella until he found the correct rooms. T om was out, but, MacCallum was granted permission to look around. McCallum, as a former resident at 94 Isabella Street, a building that still stands today , was probably well known in the neighbourhood. He described the walls as covered with sketches of lightning flashes, moving thunder storms and with trees lashing in the wind. Blodwen Davies quoted Dr . MacCallum as saying , “ As I looked over his sketches, I realized their truthfulness, their feeling and sympathy with the grim, fascinating northland. Dark they were, muddy in colour , tight and not wanting technical defects, but they made me feel that the North had gripped Thomson, as it had gripped me.” xv   In April 1913 T om displayed A Northern L ake  at the O .S .A.’s 41 st   Annual Exhibition. The 1913 exhibition was a total triumph for the old Grip crowd. Johnston, Carmichael, MacDonald, McL ean, Lis- mer and V arley were all represented with MacDonald’s The L onely North  reproduced in the catalogue. Even T om ’s brother George whose address is listed as in New Haven had a work in the show . T om was to spend very little time at R ous and Mann. The sale of A Northern L ake  to the Ontario Govern- ment for $250 in April 1913, made it easy to make his decision to paint full time. According to Lismer , T om cashed his cheque in $1 bills, took them home, threw them in the air and danced a fandango. It must have gratified T om even more to know that his former teacher W illiam Cruickshank had been part of the gov-

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Grey Owl (Archibald Belaney)  by Y ousuf K arsh, 1936

ernment ’s O .S .A. selection panel. It didn ’t hurt that studio -mates J .W . Beatty and J .E .H . MacDonald were on the OS .A.’s Executive Council. T om took a two month leave of ab- sence from R ous and Mann and headed up north in May 1913 to sketch, fish and work as a fire ranger on the Metagami R eserve just south of T immins. He went alone. It was during this summer when T om was a fire ranger on the Metagami R eserve that he met Grey Owl aka Archie Belaney . Many years later , Grey Owl remembered that he met many fire rangers on L ake Minisinakwa, but, T om stood out as the one who painted and made especially good donuts. Belaney also remembered that T om had taken him to an Artists’ Club in the winter of that year . xvi   The two month leave from spring 1913 stretched to November . T om returned to T oronto via Huntsville, probably staying at his new friends the T rainors as his friend Dr . John McR uer and his wife Edythe had left for a tuberculosis sanatorium in Denver , Colorado. xvii   Dr . MacCallum again visited T om in his Isabella xviii  rooms and ended up taking half the sketches to his home on 26 W arren R oad near St. Clair to better study them. On the back of The Light that Never W as MacCallum wrote, “ Thomson saw this early morning— he had spent all night in a canoe out on the lake because of the flies — 1913 MacCallum ”. Impressed by the 1913 output, MacCallum showed the works to A.Y . Jackson and then arranged for the two to meet at L awren Har-

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T om Thomson ’s T oronto Neighbourhoods

A Northern L ake National Gallery of Canada (no. 4705) cybermuse.gallery .ca

ris’ studio at Y onge and Bloor over the Bank of Commerce. Mac- Callum also offered to cover T om ’s expenses so that he could devote   himself full time to art. Harris and MacCallum had an idea for a better residence for T om. They were working on constructing the Stu- dio Building in the R osedale V alley R avine to be a home for artists. By 1913 T om had moved to 66 W ellesley Street where he boarded with F rank Gavin a bartender at the C.P .R. hotel. Incredibly enough 66 W ellesley still stands. I tried to ignore the K entucky F ried Chicken and barbershop signs as I took it in. The building , for a brief time in the 1980s the home of the T oronto Aids Committee, was larger than T om ’s other boarding houses. I realized that T om probably had more space in this abode, enough to paint comfortably . This was borne out by F ranklin Carmichael who according to Blodwen Davies vis- ited T om there. Carmichael found T om at work on the sketches from his 1913 summer trips. “ The room was thick with smoke and there was T om with his huge canvas. It was a northern scene, a distant line of shore and a vast expanse of grey and soggy sky .” xix   It was at 66 W ellesley that T om received a phone call from J .E .H . MacDonald who had moved to the Village of Thornhill. xx  J .E .H . needed help. MacDonald had undertaken a commission from T oronto General Hospital to design and illustrate a bound presenta- tion album for the lieutenant -governor of Ontario and a pamphlet depicting the new hospital’s interiors including operating rooms and equipment. Joseph Flavelle, then Chairman of the T oronto Hospital Board, had set a tight deadline. Upon MacDonald’s call, T om took the T oronto and Y ork R adial R ail- way to Thornhill where J .E .H . and former Grip workmate Stanley K emp met him. “I can still see MacDonald and me standing as re- ception committee, watching the last radial car come down the hill

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and then up the hill, and then blessed relief , T ommy Thomson getting off as promised. Three pairs of hands, being pumped like pump handles.” MacDonald’s son Thoreau re- called, “I hung around hoping to hear something about the North but can only recollect T om smiling and quietly working .” xxii   By January 1914 T om was in stu- dio one with A.Y . Jackson at the Studio Building on 25 Severn Street. It was still under construc- tion. Although T om had Severn Street as his permanent address for the next three years, he spent as much time as he could up north. These years from 1914 – 1917 are no longer T om Thom- son ’s lost T oronto years. They are very well documented with some interesting exceptions. In November 1915 T om went to Owen Sound to see his sister Minnie Henry who was visiting from Saskatoon. When T om ’s niece Jesse Harkness came to T oronto to take art courses, she stayed at the Y .W .C.A., on Elm Street and T om visited with her there and gave her tickets to theatre and music events. In 1916 T om went with his

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T om Thomson ’s T oronto Neighbourhoods

T oronto and Y ork R adial R ailway Map, c1914 wikipedia.org | Georgina P ioneer Village

sister and family to Comber , Ontario for the wedding of his nephew Norman Harkness. Also in 1916, the artist Florence McGillivray xxiii ,   recently back from Europe, visited T om in The Shack. Florence had painted in the north in 1914 and her painting A fterglow   from around that time compares eerily with T om ’s works. Although there was a signifi- cant age difference, there must have been some attraction as Florence visited him at Mowat L odge in the spring of 1917. At the time of these visits, Florence exhibited with the O .S .A. and split her time between her sister Jennie - Caroline’s home on W ellesley Street in T oronto and the home on Byron Street in Whitby she’d inherited from her mother . Florence’s calling card and an invi- tation to her 1917 art exhibition were found in his sketch box after his drowning . When T om was dead, Florence drifted back to her sister Catherine Amelia ’s house in Ottawa. xxviii As I muse on this relationship, I realize that I’m done with my reconnoitering . F inding no places still standing on Alexander and Is- abella streets where T om could have lived, I double back along the very pleasant Dun- donald, a residential street that appears more reminiscent of T om ’s times in T oronto. I have come to the end of chasing T om ’s spirit

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R oyal Alexandra Theatre, c2007 Mary Cook

St. Andrew ’s Church, c2007 R oy Thomson Hall in foreground Mary Cook

around T oronto and head back to Union Station. As I stomp downhill past the clock tower of the former St. Charles T avern which had originally been a fire hall, the tired old facades on stretches of Y onge Street hearken back to the days when these were much fresher daily scenery on T om ’s trips to work. I’m walking in T om ’s foot steps. Months later on an outing to the R oyal Alexandra Theatre, as I head to the Delta Chelsea on Gerrard to drop off a friend, I keep seeing signs of T om on the streets he trod: T emperance, King , Gerrard, Y ork, Adelaide. I realize that even when I’m not looking for T om, I keep seeing him. T om might have immortalized Algonquin P ark but he will never leave T oronto. I no longer have to look for T om in T oronto. He’s everywhere.

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T om Thomson ’s T oronto Neighbourhoods

Saturday Morning Class copying pictures Art Gallery of T oronto, c1931 | Arthur Goss, photographer City of T oronto Archives, RG 8-2-12 | www .toronto.ca

i Holwood, now called Flavelle House is part of the University of T oronto Law School. ii In 1919, St. Geor ge’ s Hall at 14 Elm Street became the home of the Arts and Letters Club. iii W illiam Brodie, first cousin to Thomson’ s grandmother Elizabeth Brodie Thomson, was closer in age to Thomson’ s father John and hence the ‘uncle’   designation bestowed on him by the Thomson children. iv In 1907 Seton made a 2000 mile canoe trip mapping northern Canada; in 1901 he was chairman of the founding committee of Boy Scouts of America serving as Chief Scout from 1910–1915. v W illie Brodie was 19 – years – old when he died. He had already collected sam- ples for the Smithsonian, won 1 1 first prize awards at the 1881 Industrial Exhi- bition (forerunner of the C.N.E) and had his lecture on western Canadian samples read by his father to the Natural History Society . vi The Royal Alexandra Theatre, built at the cost of $750,000 opened August 26, 1907 with a pantomime ‘spectacle’  called T op O’  Th’  W orld. vii The Central Library was the former Mechanics Institute which mer ged into T oronto’ s Library system in 1883. Mechanics Institutes were modeled on adult education or ganizations in Edinbur gh and London that existed to instruct and improve the skills of apprentices and working men. The building had a Read- ing Room and a Music Hall. viii W ilson Buzza, 74 years of age, quoted in Owen Sound Sunday T imes , January 12, 1977. ix Albert Robson T om Thomson  (T oronto: R yerson Press, 1937), 5. x Blodwen Davies A  Study of T om Thomson: the story of a man who looked for beauty and for truth in the wilderness (T oronto: R yerson Press, 1937), 88. xi Ironically , the view from Grip included the Star Theatre at 23 T emperance Street which opened in August 26, 1901 with a company of burlesques. By 1906 it was also showing movies. xii In The Sun,  Swift Current, September 6, 1963 Mr . Burke reminisced that the Fairy Lake sketches were painted for him at the time of his wedding. xiv Patrick Boyer A  Passion For Justice: The Legacy of James Chalmers McRuer (T or onto: Blue Butterfly Book Publishing, 2010), 26. xv Davies, op cit,  41.

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xvi Archie Belaney quoted in W illiam Arthur Deacon, “Famed Canvases Found in Cabin”, T or onto Mail & Empir e, (T oronto, 1936). xvii McRuer died in Colorado in July 1917. His metal casket was brought home to the family plot in A yr by his brother , ironically , at the same time as Geor ge was bringing T om home to Leith. xviii T om may have boarded with Robert Holmes, an O.S.A. member whose ad- dress is listed as 24 Isabella in The City of T or onto Dir ectory . xix Davies, op cit,   T om Thomson , 34. xx The MacDonalds were much on the move during these years. They had moved from Quebec A venue to 108 Conduit before heading to Thornhill. xxi S.H.F . Kemp, “A  Recollection of T om Thomson” in W illiam T . Little, The T om Thomson Mystery  (T oronto: McGraw – Hill, 1970), 178. xxii Ottelyn Addison, T om Thomson: the Algonquin Y ears  (T oronto: R yerson Press, 1969), 84 – 85. xxiii T om and Florence had much in common. Her family had come from Scotland on the Alert , the same ship as Thomson’ s grandmother and Uncle Brodie, both had W illiam Cruikshank as instructors, both were admitted to the O.S.A. at ap- proximately the same time and both appreciated the aesthetic richness of northern Ontario landscapes. xxiv Stuart Logan Thompson and W illiam Edwin W ilkes were two of T om’ s Legg Brothers co-workers. xxv Ben Jackson was also known as H.B.Jackson and Harry Jackson. xxvi Elizabeth McCarnen’ s great-grand-nephew Paul Simon stated that T om lived briefly at 39 Pembroke Street. xxvii T om Thomson is said to have helped J.E.H. and his father build the cottage. xxviii Biographical information for Florence McGillivray , W .C. Allen, A  Collection of W orks by Flor ence Helena McGillivray  (V ictoria B.C.: Friesen Press, 2016).

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