and the ground sheet with bread and bacon in the bow section. There were no fishing poles, no gear; even his small axe was gone.”
Robinson immediately reported to Park Superintendent Bartlett who authorized a search. Tom’s brother, George, was contacted. He arrived at Canoe Lake on July 12. Dynamite was exploded in the lake without the desired results — no body surfaced.
The sharp eyes and minds of guides George Rowe and Charlie Scrim noted that Tom’s own working paddle was missing. Especially strange was how the portaging paddle was lashed in a position to portage. It had been knotted in a most unorthodox way. Only an inexperienced canoeist would fashion such a knot. Thomson was an expert canoeist and outdoorsman.
On July 14 George Thomson gathered up a number of Tom’s sketches and caught the train back to New York. He felt there was little he could do.
On the morning of July 15, 1917, Dr. G.W. Howland spotted something lying low in the water by Hayhurst Point on the east shore of Canoe Lake. At first he thought it was a loon. At the same time, George Rowe and Lowrie Dickson were paddling down the middle of the lake when they saw the doctor hailing them. The canoeists aimed for the object. It was Tom. He was dead.
They towed the body to a campsite on Big Wapomeo, approximately 300 metres (100 yards) ahead. There at Big Wap, a campout halfway down the west side of the lake, they tied the body to tree roots in a shallow. The guides then notified Dr. Howland and Mark Robinson, who contacted Superintendent Bartlett.
Dr. A.E. Ranney, a coroner living in North Bay, was notified. He did not arrive on the train the next day. Robinson was frantic and informed his superintendent that something needed to be done with the body. It was not right to leave it in the blazing sun. The superintendent told Mark to have Dr. Howland examine the body. Dr. Howland was a Toronto medical doctor and a professor of neurology at the University of Toronto who was vacationing on Wapomeo Island. Mark then ordered a casket and rough box for the burial.
On the morning of July 17, Dr. Howland examined the deceased. Mark helped to remove a length of fishing line that was wrapped 16 or 17 times around Tom’s left ankle. That was odd. There was no water in the lungs. Across the left temple was a mark that looked as though he had been struck with the edge of a paddle. The doctor’s report read, “A bruise on left temple the size of 4 inches long, no other sign of external marks visible on body, air issuing from mouth, some bleeding from right ear. Cause of death, drowning.”
Tom was placed in a casket and moved to the mainland for a hurried funeral. A small congregation of Canoe Lake residents and guides, including Miss Trainor, caught the evening train for Huntsville. She would never again greet her lover by the water’s edge. Or would she?
A short time later, a telegram arrived to the attention of Shannon Fraser. It was a request by Mr. H.W. Churchill, a Huntsville undertaker, to exhume the body. Apparently, the family had requested that Tom be interred near the family home at Leith, Ontario. At 8:00 p.m. Fraser met the eastbound train at Canoe Lake Station. Churchill got off the train wearing a dark suit and bowler hat. He informed Fraser that he had a metal casket with him and asked that Fraser give him a hand to put it on his wagon.
With a call to the horses they were off. Fraser was stunned to learn that Churchill was going to remove the body that very night. It all seemed very strange. Fraser remarked that he couldn’t get any help until the next day.
Judge Little quoted the following conversation: “The undertaker replied, ‘I don’t need any help, just get me a good digging shovel, a lantern and a crow bar and I’II do the rest.’
‘Here we are,’ announced Shannon. ‘Do you still want to do this job tonight without any help?’
‘Just pick me up about midnight and I’ll be ready,’ replied the undertaker.”
Fraser returned at midnight to give Churchill a hand to place the casket on the rear baggage floor of the coach and transport the body to the train station. Judge Little highlighted an oddity that occurred: “Fraser was to comment a number of times later, ‘It just didn’t impress me the weight was distributed the way it should be with a body in it.”’
Judge Little had to see for himself if Tom Thomson was still buried at Canoe Lake. From left to right: Leonard Gibson, Little, W.J. Eastaugh, and Frank Braught starting to dig. To their amazement they found a body in Thomson’s grave.
Courtesy of Jane Loftus
Judge Little also documented Mark Robinson’s comments: “The Superintendent called me up and said, ‘Go down to the cemetery and if they haven’t filled the grave in, fill it in.’ I went down. Now, in one corner of the grave was a hole. I wouldn’t say it would be more than 20 inches wide and about a depth of 18 inches. God forgive me if I’m wrong but I still think Thomson’s body is over there (Mark pointed to the hillside gravesite where Tom was originally interred).”
In the 1950s Judge Little and three other men, Jack Eastaugh, Leonard Gibson, and Frank Braught decided to investigate the Thomson mystery themselves. They firmly believed Tom was still buried in the Canoe Lake Cemetery. The judge was convinced he had been murdered. Armed with shovels and axes, the men began to clear the underbrush. At six feet (two metres) they found nothing. Then Jack called out from beside a spruce tree. There were depressions 3 feet (one metre) wide in the ground. They began to dig. They struck pay dirt. The shovel found the remains of a rough pine box. No name was inscribed on the box. There was no evidence of metal remnants, such as buttons, belt buckle, shoe nails or clothing.
Judge Little described the scene: “We saw parts of the casket lining and what appeared to be possibly a cotton or light canvas shroud. We recalled that, after Tom’s examination by Dr. Howland, the body was immediately placed in a casket wrapped only in a shroud due to the removal of clothes related to the advanced state of decomposition of the body. We also discovered a hole in the skull in the region of the temple which coincided with the region indicated at both the inquest and in Mark Robinson’s observations of a blow to the temple.”
A short time later, Dr. Henry Ebbs and Dr. Noble Sharpe of the Ontario Provincial Criminal Laboratory arrived at Canoe Lake. They gathered the skeletal remains and photographed the skull with its puncture at the temple.
Dr. Sharpe later concluded, “The bones were definitely male. Calculations from humerus, femur and tibia gave an estimated height of 5’8”. These bones suggested also a robust, well-muscled person.”
Professor J.C.B Grant, of the Department of Anthropology, University of Toronto, was asked for his opinion. He stated: “The skeleton was of a male, strong, height 5’8” plus or minus 2”, age in late 20s and of Mongolian type, either Indian or nearly full-breed Indian.”
Further studies were made of the skull, including x-rays. According to Judge Little, “X-ray of the skull before emptying out the sand showed no bullet in the skull and none found in the sand after emptying. The hole in the left temple region is nearly three-quarters of an inch [less than two centimetres] in diameter. The inner plate opening is slightly wider showing a slight bevelling. No radiating fractures were seen in X-ray. There was no injury on the inner table of the skull opposite the hole where a bullet would impinge. The orbital plate and nasal bones were so intact that no bullet could have escaped from the skull.” Therefore, the hole in the temple was not the result of a bullet wound.
The skull removed from Thomson’s grave indicates a hole at the temple, coinciding with the injury sustained
