The Mysterious Death of Tom Thomson
Here we have a classic Canadian mystery. For anyone who has been to Canoe Lake in Algonquin Park and seen the memorial to Thomson, it is impossible not to wonder if he really did just drown or if something shady was going on.
There are layers to this and two different mysteries that I’ll discuss. The first is obviously how he died, was it an accidental drowning when his canoe capsized or was it a murder or suicide? The second is after he died his family requested his body be removed from the Mowat Cemetery near Canoe Lake and shipped to Owen Sound to be buried in the family plot, but did this ever actually happen?
Background
Before I get into his death I’ll give you a lil background on the guy. Tom Thomson was a Canadian artist and a member of the Group of Seven (though technically the group didn’t officially form until two years after he died). He’s famous for paintings like The West Wind and Northern River. In addition to being an artist, he was a real outdoorsy guy, he loved fishing and hiking and canoeing (though we’ll come back to how skilled he was later). He spent a lot of time in Algonquin Park working as a fishing guide and a fire ranger as well as sketching on small canvasses which he would take back to Toronto in the winter to turn into full-size pieces.
How Did Thomson Die?
Here are the facts:
Thomson left the Mowat Lodge on the morning of July 8, 1917, to go to either Tea Lake Dam or West Lake
His flipped canoe was spotted later that afternoon
Thomson’s body was found in the lake eight days later (July 16, 1917)
He had a four-inch bruise on his right temple
Here are things that people say that aren’t noted in primary documents from the time that Thomson died:
He had fishing line wrapped tightly around his ankles
His paddle was never found
He had a gunshot wound to the head/people heard a gunshot on the day he died
You’re probably saying to yourself, ok if he is an experienced canoeist and guide and knows the park very well how likely is it that he just fell out of his canoe and drowned? I actually don’t want to dismiss this because many people, including the doctor who examined his body at the time, think that it was an accident. According to his friends, this was not the first time he had tipped his canoe. He had lost all of his painting gear during one trip on the Mississagi River in 1912 when his canoe flipped over, he also admitted to park rangers that he didn’t know a ton about canoeing. So if it was an accident he paddled out into the lake with his maple syrup and jam (this is not at all a joke, he is Canadian after all) and somehow lost control of the boat or hit something and tipped over hitting his head on the canoe or a rock and drowning. Simple, straightforward.
But people love to gossip so of course there are two other theories.
The first is that Thomson died by suicide. Personally, this doesn’t hold a lot of water for me but I’ll give you the deets. The main theory here is that his love interest, Winnie Trainor, was pregnant and he didn’t really want to get married and have a baby. But no note was ever found and honestly, there would have been easier ways for him to escape that responsibility. Plus he had just started selling his work (notably In The Northland and Spring Ice) to the National Gallery so was enjoying some success.
The second, and much more compelling to me, is that he was murdered. Apparently Thomson got into a huge fight with his friend Shannon Fraser (a man FYI), over either money or just because they were both drunk, the night before Thomson went missing. Fraser was so mad about the fight that he followed Thomson the next day and hit him on the head with his own paddle or maybe shot him. Then paddled him out into the middle of Canoe Lake to dump him with fishing wire wrapped around his legs, I guess it was supposed to be tied to something to hold him down. He then burned the paddle to destroy the evidence. People say that his body took a suspiciously long time surfacing and that his favourite paddle was missing. These two things along with the fighting with Fraser point to murder. I’m not sold but you do you.
Where Is His Body Now?
The second (!!!) mystery in this story is where exactly is Tom Thomson’s body? Officially he was buried in Mowat Cemetery until his brother asked for the body to be sent to Owen Sound to be buried in the family plot. However, there are some VERY shady things surrounding this potential move and new-ish forensic evidence (from 2010) that may actually let me give you a conclusion for once.
So some people went over to Mowat Cemetery a few days after the body was supposed to have been exhumed and they said the hole that had been dug was waaaaaay too small to get that job done. Also, the undertaker apparently wasn’t licensed (??).
Skip ahead to 1956 and a few guys are on Canoe Lake and they decide to head on over to the cemetery and put this mystery to rest once and for all. They end up digging up the gravesite (side note, do not do this like wtf) and they come across some skeletal remains. The skull has a hole in the left temple, some claim this is a bullet wound. The Ontario government conducted an analysis, which was honestly very questionable causing them to lose some of the teeth from the skull, and they concluded the bones belonged to a young Indigenous man. No such man was ever recorded or known to be buried at that site.
In 2010 the skull was reexamined by an Ottawa dentist and orthodontist, and their findings were later evaluated and investigated further by a University of Toronto adjunct professor of archaeology and specialist in investigating exhumed remains. They all concluded that the skull was not Indigenous but in fact “European” and belonging to a “Caucasian middle-aged male - not a 22-year-old aboriginal man” (MacGregor, 2010).
Finally, they sent the skull to a forensic artist to recreate what the face of this skull may have looked like. When the artist sent back her sketches they bore a STRIKING resemblance to Thomson. See for yourself:
So maybe Thomson was never actually sent to Owen Sound and has been right on Canoe Lake for all these years. That does make me wonder what was sent in the coffin to Thomson’s family though.
Now, I’ll let you draw your own conclusions like always but I have to say this one is pretty compelling to me. I personally think it was likely an accidental death and that he was never sent back to Owen Sound because the unlicensed undertaker got too squeamish to actually finish the job. I guess the only way to know for sure what the answer is here would be to dig up the family plot in Owen Sound to see if there is a body in the casket.
Works Cited
MacGregor, Roy. “A Break in the Mysterious Case of Tom Thomson, Canada’s Van Gogh”. The Globe and Mail. October 1, 2010. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/a-break-in-the-mysterious-case-of-tom-thomson-canadas-van-gogh/article1214427/