Tom Thomson • 1877~1917
- The Thomsons of Durham
- Tom Thomson’s Toronto Neighbourhoods
- Tom Thomson’s Fine Kettle of Friends: biography, history, art and food
LINKS ON THIS PAGE: Dr. John McRuer | White Pine Pictures | MARGARET THOMSON TWEEDALE | GEORGE THOMSON LLB, O.S.A.
Getting Personal with Tom Thomson: Group of Seven Forerunner
Imagining Tom Thomson’s Toronto circa 1912
In 1912 Tom Thomson was on the cusp of becoming the painter of Algonquin Park. For the 10 previous years he’d lived in boarding houses. He escaped Toronto’s urban bustle painting with co-workers at York and Lambton Mills, in the Humber Valley and Weston at Lake Scugog and near Owen Sound. He’d been to High Park and the Don Valley collecting samples, to the Scarborough Bluffs to take photographs and to St. Catherine’s to visit a sister. He’d not yet visited the area that would make him Canada’s most renowned artist.
The Toronto Archives hold photographic collections that bring to life the Toronto of that time. They make it easy to imagine Tom walking on the streets where he lived, worked and socialized. The archival photos show what Tom escaped in 1912.
I wrote about Tom’s city experiences in Tom Thomson’s Toronto Neighbourhoods. I thought I was fairly well done until I heard from Joan Thomson. Joan is related to the artist Tom Thomson (b 1877) through his grandfather Tam’s Scottish son who was also called Tom Thomson (b 1832) and therefore his uncle.
After he came to Canada around 1851, this Tom Thomson married Jane Walker of Ashburn, ON. Tom and Jane separated in the late 1870s and she eventually lost their house in Claremont. Joan Thomson told me that Jane and their son Robert lived at 13 Breadalbane Street in Toronto from 1889 to 1893. Now, that got me stirred up again about Tom’s Toronto.
The artist Tom Thomson’s Aunt Jane and Cousin Robert had lived on the same street as he! Needing short-term accommodation between travels in 1912 Tom lodged with the 29-year-old Irish-Canadian, Catholic, lodger Benjamin Catchpole at Martha Mackenzie’s Boarding House at 61 Breadalbane. The young Benjamin was a Secretary-Treasurer of a Milling Company; he lived at Mrs. Mackenzie’s with two older Catchpoles, probably his parents.
I knew from my former walk for the Neighbourhoods piece that Breadalbane ran between Bay and Yonge and that it bore no traces of Tom’s short stay there. Tom wouldn’t have seen his aunt and cousin, but I wondered: What did Tom see?
Thanks to the intrepid research of Mary Cook and Andrea Ketelaars, we’ve been able to conjure up Breadalbane of old. The maps tell the important parts of the story. Martha Mackenzie’s Boarding House now lies under the Mowat Block. In the 1960s Breadalbane was closed at Bay to allow for the construction of the government complex. In 1912, if Tom had a front window view, he’d have overlooked the convent grounds of the Sisters of St. Joseph. Their convent and school occupied an entire city block—very imposing. He’d have been spitting distance from Queen’s Park.
We’ve put together neighbourhood images. Enjoy the ride through Toronto of yore—Tom’s Toronto.
Dr. John M. McRuer (1885 ~ 1917)
Without giving away too much of the extensive research for the as yet unpublished article “Tom Thomson’s Toronto”, there is a fascinating story about the way Tom Thomson’s and John McRuer’s lives overlap and end. As to the beginning of their connection, to which you allude in your query, they met in one of the many boarding houses that Tom frequented in his ‘lost decade’ in Toronto. John was a medical student when they first met.
I’ll go right to the end part of their lives which I didn’t put into the article because it takes place in 1917 and my focus was 1905-1912 in Toronto. John McRuer’s tuberculosis had driven him and his wife to a sanitorium in Colorado. Tom kept in touch with the McRuers because he’d been best man at their wedding in 1909.
In the summer of 1917 at Mowat Lodge when Tom found out that his friend had died, he became very withdrawn. John McRuer’s death affected him greatly. Within weeks, Tom himself had died tragically. (I don’t mean to suggest ANY connection.)
Just as Tom’s eldest brother, a lawyer, was charged with bringing home his body in a sealed metal casket, John McRuer’s older brother, a lawyer, travelled to Colorado to bring his brother’s remains home. Both George and James (later Chief Justice of Ontario) were travelling on the rails with metal caskets at about the same time to bring their brothers home. I find it a touching synchronicity.
Tom Thomson (1877–1917) created some of Canada’s most recognizable art from sketches made in Algonquin Park 1912–1917. His association with Ontario’s north is well known. Tom Thomson’s 12 years in Toronto are less known.
White Pine Pictures
WHITE PINE PICTURES STILL EXPLORING CANADA’S GREAT PAINTERS
I loved working with the White Pine team on West Wind: the Vision of Tom Thomson which won five documentary awards in 2012. I’ve stayed in touch with Rebecca Middleton and Nancy Lang researchers extraordinaire! In 2015 White Pine continued their focus on the artists who worked with Tom Thomson with Painted Land: In Search of the Group of Seven. The television broadcast premiere of Where the Universe Sings: the Spiritual Journey of Lawren Harris was on June 25, 2016 on TVO. Both Nancy and Beck have already supported the research for my upcoming book on Tom Thomson: A Fine Kettle of Friends: a fine kettle of friends.
White Pine Pictures released a great new documentary about Tom in 2012 (West Wind: The Vision of Tom Thomson) in which I played a small part. Research from The Thomsons of Durham and from Tom Thomson Toronto Neighbourhoods was used by the dynamic White Pine Pictures team. Director Michele Hozer, filmmaker Peter Raymont and researchers Nancy Lang and Rebecca Middleton so inspired me that I started research on a thematic biography I’ve tentatively titled Over Easy: Tom Thomson Unlike You’ve Ever Seen Him.
ON THE TRAIL OF TOM THOMSON
LEITH SHOOT
White Pine Pictures President Peter Raymont, Nancy Lang, publisher of At the Ojibway and researcher extraordinaire Rebecca Middleton are well-started on what will be a stirring new documentary on Tom Thomson. They visited recently to explore the background research for The Thomsons of Durham: Tom Thomson’s Family Heritage. Their thorough research and award-winning ways are seen in documentary films such as Genius Within: The Inner Life of Glenn Gould (Toronto International Film Festival Official 2009 selection) and Shake Hands with the Devil: The Journey of Romeo Dallaire (2007 Emmy for Best Documentary). Keep posted for more information about the unfolding of this exciting project.
Doc looks beyond tragic Tom Thomson ~ Toronto Start article by Peter Goddard
Pricey paintings by artist as a (forever) young man by Globe and Mail columnist Roy MacGregor
GETTING PERSONAL WITH TOM THOMSON: GROUP OF SEVEN FORERUNNER
Following up on The Thomsons of Durham: Tom Thomson’s Family Heritage (2005) which provided Tom Thomson’s family history, I’ll explore subjects of interest to website visitors. Want to know more about:
- Co-workers at Grip and Rous and Mann, artist/outdoorsmen such as Ben Jackson, Tom McLean and William Smithson Broadhead?
- Bosses, patrons and mentors such as J.E.H. MacDonald, Albert Robson, Dr, James MacCallum and Dr. William Brodie?
- Family and friends such as Dr. John McRuer and Mark Robinson?
- Female companions such as Alice Elinor Lambert, Elizabeth McCarney and Florence McGillvray?
Information will appear on the website in sequence dependent upon visitor demand. As a by-product, watch Toronto and the early 1900s come alive.
Margaret Thomson Tweedale — 1884-1979
She was kind, generous, protective of family, loyal, had a good sense of humour, and was fun to be with for young and old.”
Helen Fisk Young, Margaret’s grandniece
“I remember she was always busy. Even in advanced age when we visited, she’d sit on a short-legged stool and polish the floor around her while we were talking.”
Kaye Fisk Morrison, Margaret’s grandniece
Margaret was the ninth of ten children born to John and Margaret Thomson. She grew up in Leith, near Owen Sound sharing with her siblings a love of music, arts, reading and the outdoors. Specially bound books were the family’s favourite Christmas gifts.
With the Thomson births spread over an 18 year period, Margaret had few early experiences with her eldest brothers George, Henry and Ralph who went west to seek their fortunes when she was between five and seven years of age. Margaret’s eldest sister Elizabeth married when Margaret was eight years old. She had 17 years with Tom before he went off to join his brothers out west. It was the family tradition of letter writing that kept them connected. Even when Margaret’s sisters Louise and Minnie married the Henry brothers and moved to Saskatoon they kept in touch through letters.
When she graduated from high school, Margaret went to Ottawa to train as a kindergarten teacher and then to Cobalt and Timmins to teach. In 1920, after more than 15 years of teaching, the spinster school marm married dashing William Tweedale, a Scottish-born Great War veteran. He was 24 to her 36 years of age.
William went to work at the Post Office in Toronto while Margaret made a home for them on Glenlake Avenue in the High Park district. According to grand-niece Helen Young, “It was a small two story brick house against a hillside. A vacant wooded lot was on one side and pleasant, friendly neighbours on the other. The interior was nicely but simply furnished. The walls (which Aunt Margaret painted herself) were cream. There were many paintings about the walls—George’s and Tom’s and A.Y. Jackson’s. There were also two very nice pen and ink renderings by Tom. In the dining room there was a plate rail on which she would place her current fall or spring sketches for consideration. In the living room was an upright piano and stored were her violin and Tom’s mandolin. Her treasured fine china was blue and white Royal Crown Derby Mikado (often used but washed only by her!). A silver tea service was always in use when visitors came to the house.”
Before Margaret had settled into this comfortable domestic life, the tragic death of her brother Tom had upset the whole family. Helen Young recalls, “Aunt Margaret once told me during one of our many telephone conversations that she and her sister Elizabeth (Helen’s grandmother) had talked well into the night about Tom’s death—theories other than natural causes.”
All her life Margaret remained fiercely protective of her brother Tom’s reputation. “In a phone conversation,” adds Helen, “she told me that Zena Cherry, a society writer, had written a column about The Shack. Within The Shack she said was a blanket, ‘that a mother would give her black sheep son’. This comment prompted a hot letter of rebuke from Aunt Margaret.”
Helen continues with another Tom anecdote, “While working at Taylor Statten Camp in Algonquin Park, uncle Bill and aunt Margaret visited me. Algonquin Park Ranger Mark Robinson was a guest there. He told lots of stories of his early days in the Park; including some about Tom Thomson. Aunt Margaret spoke with him and I remember her being quite emotional following the encounter.”
The shared pain of Tom’s death brought the siblings closer together through correspondence and visits. By 1926 George and Jean Telford Thomson had returned to Owen Sound and soon thereafter George started the traditional spring and fall painting expeditions. Margaret first joined these expeditions when she was established in Toronto and had her own driver, the obliging William Tweedale.
William Tweedale was supportive of Margaret’s painting. He was proud of her work and that of George and Tom. He was also supportive of the young Ontario College of Art student, his wife’s grand niece, Helen Young. Helen remembers, “He had a fine collection of classical records which were a lesson for me in appreciation. Although he never mentioned the war, I believe it coloured his political views. The news was closely followed. While staying there I realized that silence was expected during the twelve o’clock news.” Helen also recalled that Margaret and William were very affectionate though at times Margaret could be fiery. “Aunt Margaret was very protective of family letters and memorabilia and I remember her being furious with uncle Bill for his having been over-zealous in cleaning out a closet.”
From the 1940s onward, each year there were painting trips north to the Dwight area with William at the wheel. Sometimes Margaret’s friends Mrs Halliwell and Mrs Cameron accompanied them. William would read while the group sketched. Helen narrates, “I was visiting at times when she had been preparing panels which had to be readied at least six weeks prior to the trip north. She also prepared knee warmers –knitted sometimes by friends. She didn’t wear slacks so those warm stockings were a must. She wore a coat and hat with scarves tied over it. They painted in any kind of weather—morning and afternoon for two week trips. Sometimes they were forced by rain or snow to work from the veranda of Miss Glass’ rooming place at Milford Bay, Muskoka, their location after Dwight. Landscape, of course, was her only subject matter.”
In a 1964 Toronto Star article Margaret stated, “I think my brother George is one of the best painters in Canada.” As proud and fond as she was of George, she preferred to remove herself from the group when she sketched with them. Helen notes, “She did not want to be instructed by George-preferring to work and discover on her own. She was very independent. In Margaret’s own words, “I like to do my own work in my own way but he (George) tells me things and criticizes my sketches.” Program notes from the Glenhyrst 1965 Thomson Family Exhibit state, “Her work is distinctly her own, reflecting her gracious character rather than the robust works of her brothers.”
With George as chief critic and William as great supporter, Margaret created a small body of charming landscapes in the years she took painting expeditions with her family and friends. She was reluctant to promote or sell them. According to Margaret Weier’s 1964 article, “When Mrs. William Tweedale sells one of her paintings, it’s almost like parting with a child.”
Margaret outlived her husband and painting partners George and Fraser by a decade. However, by the time they were gone she had spent a quarter of a century enjoying their company and sketching and painting with them. She was the last surviving Thomson child when she died in 1979.
Margaret Thomson Tweedale’s works were exhibited at Glenhyrst and in Owen Sound in the 1960s. Her works were featured in “The Thomsons of Durham” at the Durham West Arts Centre in 2005 and now once again she joins her brother George in a new painting adventure at John A. Libby Fine Arts.
George Thomson LLB, O.S.A., 1868–1965
George Thomson was John and Margaret Thomson’s first born. He spent nine years on his grandparents’ farm in Claremont as five more children joined the family. George’s grandparents, Tam and Elizabeth Brodie Thomson, lived in the stone house across the lane from his parents’ stone house. The extended Brodie/Thomson clan participated in music evenings and exemplified a love of reading and learning.
GEORGE THOMSON LLB, O.S.A
George Thomson was John and Margaret Thomson’s first born. He spent nine years on his grandparents’ farm in Claremont as five more children joined the family. George’s grandparents, Tam and Elizabeth Brodie Thomson, lived in the stone house across the lane from his parents’ stone house. The extended Brodie/Thomson clan participated in music evenings and exemplified a love of reading and learning.
In 1877 after Tam and Elizabeth had died, and when baby Tom Thomson was old enough to travel, John and Margaret set out for a new life in Leith where four more children were born. Margaret’s sister Henrietta and their niece Lottie joined the burgeoning Thomson family on the farm called Rose Hill.
Family life revolved around farming, learning, music and religion. Rose Hill backed on to Colonel Telford’s farm and as a result, the Colonel and John Thomson became good fishing buddies. Thomson and Telford families also mingled at church where George sang in the choir.
As the first born, George had many responsibilities. According to Dorothy Telford, grand-niece by marriage to George, “Every fall he went with his father in a large row boat to the point to catch fish for the winter. They would come back with the boat filled with fish and his mother would put the fish in barrels with salt. They would have enough fish for the winter.”
Although George helped out until after his high school graduation, there was scant work in Owen Sound and he did not wish to become a farmer. The lure of the new railroad to the west beckoned him. At 21 he set out to make his fortune. He arrived in Seattle by way of Chatham. While in Chatham he had taken business courses, including some from Frank McLaren of Seattle.
In 1892/3 George and Frank McLaren brought together the Seattle and Puget Sound Business College and the Acme Business School. Although they named the new business the Consolidated College Company, by 1903 it was known as the Acme Business School. George was instructor and partner in this new business and at various points his brothers Ralph, Henry and Tom studied there.
Shortly after creating their business partnership, George married Frank’s sister Margaret Euphemia. A son, George McLaren Thomson was born. Sadly Margaret Euphemia languished after the birth and died within six months. George settled in to raise his son with the help of the McLaren family.
After a decade, George was not satisfied in Seattle as a business college instructor. The law degree from the University of Washington in 1901 did not satisfy him either. In 1906 the vision of a finely painted landscape in a store window changed his life. According to a 1964 Frank Barkey article in The Owen Sound Sun-Times, “George saw displayed in a shop window a fine, modern colorful picture – a seascape of the California coast, with rocks, cliffs and rolling sea, This picture fascinated him and woke in him the instinct and determination to paint.”
After 13 years as a business college owner/instructor, George sold out and moved to New York to study at the Art Students League. He was 38 years old. Within a year he had art works accepted at the National Academy of Design in New York and the Art Institute of Chicago. He supported himself with part time jobs as a book keeper and cashier.
George next moved to New Haven to study under the artists of the Lyme Colony. The New Haven Union newspaper of July, 1908 states, “Mr. Thomson’s work is characterized by a fidelity to truth as revealed in nature and shows at first glance strength and simplicity of design and refinement of color.”
During the New Haven years George exhibited extensively in the United States so much so that he was considered an American artist. L.R. Hammond reports in the Saturday Chronicle of Nov 8, 1913, “George Thomson of New Haven is a painter whose canvases are done in accordance with what’s accepted as the best thought in American landscape painting.”
Although far from his family, George corresponded and made many visits to Owen Sound. He made sure that his son George McLaren joined him from Seattle when he visited his parents who had by 1903 moved to 4th Avenue in Owen Sound. While on holiday he also frequently met with the lovely Jean Telford, daughter of his family’s former Leith neighbour.
In 1916 at 48 years of age George married Jean Telford. Jean moved to New Haven. The newlyweds were in Canada in July 1917 when the telegraph arrived to say that Tom Thomson’s canoe had been found empty on Canoe Lake. George was dispatched to Algonquin Park to assist with the search. As the eldest child and a lawyer, George was designated to handle the furor and confusion that followed upon the discovery of Tom’s body.
After the turmoil subsided somewhat, George and Jean returned to spend a fruitful decade in New Haven. George continued to blossom as an artist and Jean made a home for him. However, when his mother died in 1925 George determined to return home. He had suffered from stomach ailments for years and he wanted to give up his daytime business-related jobs so that he could concentrate full time on his art. He also wanted to support his father. George was very close to his father and still handled most of his affairs.
The February 1926 marriage of his father to his aunt Henrietta altered George and Jean’s plans somewhat. Instead of moving into the spacious 4th Avenue home, George and Jean settled into the Telford home on 8th Avenue. The 8th Avenue house was capacious with a view of Georgian Bay, but, it was also quite full. In 1926 Colonel Telford, his wife, maiden daughter Kate and son Jim resided there. However, George and Jean soon moved in with their piano which they had brought from New Haven. George loved to play piano at Christmas.
George sketched out of doors and completed works in the dining room which had the best north window. He placed works in the attic to dry. At the end of each morning’s painting session, the very orderly George cleaned his palette and moved all his supplies into a small room behind the dining room. Dorothy Telford relates that when there were no planned parties, and George loved company, paintings were left against the wall where she and others eagerly viewed them. “Uncle George was very different from most artists I knew. He was very regimented and I always thought that was because of his business school experience.”
As well as annual spring and fall painting expeditions into Muskoka with his siblings Margaret and Fraser, spouses and sometimes Margaret’s friends, George had other accommodating drivers. Frequently his brother-in-law Jim drove and the Telford sisters catered when he went on sketching expeditions.
Artist John Corfe, who had painted with Group of Seven members, also drove the pair to sketch. “I can’t imagine two more unlikely painting partners,” said Dorothy. “George was very religious, a teetotaler and didn’t smoke. John drank, smoked and was very flamboyant.” The painting partnership, however, worked.
Artist Horace Vick also drove George out for sketching expeditions. Mr Vick related to Dorothy Telford that when he visited 8th Avenue, “he noticed a bushel basket in the back shed. This basket was filled with Tom Thomson paintings. It set there until the first book came out about Tom when George then moved the basket to the attic.” George did have two lovely sunsets painted by Tom in his living and dining room.
In the 38 years that George Thomson painted in the environs of Owen Sound, Muskoka and Haliburton, he produced a prodigious and much loved body of work. His annual works were shown in Toronto and Owen Sound and came to hang not only in great galleries but in a multitude of homes and public buildings. He was generous with his art talks and with assistance to local artists. By 1963 he had justifiably been named Owen Sound’s Citizen of the Year. Throughout the years, reviews of his works were glowing.
Augustus Bridle wrote in The Toronto Star, Feb 7, 1942, “Thomson always was a scientific painter. With his high sense of rugged beauty in the Georgian Bay milieu, he has for 20 years painted the country that he knows as intimately as Homer Watson knew Doon and the Grand River, into thousands of beauty-spots on canvas.” After this 1942 review, George painted another 23 years!
George outlived all the residents of 8th Avenue. The day before he died, he was out sketching with his brother Fraser at Lion’s Head and Barrow Bay. He was 97 years old—at the time, the oldest practicing professional artist in Canada.