as he had appeared.
“In that moment I sensed a strange energy. It took me off guard. I have felt that strange feeling before. I don’t know why I took the picture and began to second-guess the experience. Had it really happened? Would there be anything on the photograph? I didn’t understand why this person had turned so abruptly. Why was someone out on the lake in such fog? Why had he disappeared? I got this strange feeling. Maybe in my own consciousness I made a connection. I do know that I can only connect from my own experience. I knew it was Tom Thomson. I was shocked when the film was developed. There was my phantom canoeist.
“I was drawn to paint the photograph. A good painting depicts what you have experienced. This photograph was a memory of the moment. The painting chooses you. It is always there. It never leaves. One day something triggers it. Within six months after the experience, I painted it. Then I painted over it. I wasn’t ready. It didn’t feel right.
“When I told people the story they agreed that it indeed could be Tom Thomson. Six or seven years later I did a small watercolour of that dramatic experience on Canoe Lake.
“Then one day, during a show in my gallery, a young man walked in. He was going to school out west. This piece of work, entitled The Return of Tom Thomson, was hanging in the show. The man purchased it. About a year later, he wrote to me to say that he bought the painting because he had seen the same man, in the same canoe, in the park. He had felt it had been a ghost himself. He was amazed to see it hanging in my gallery.”
Few pictures exist of Winnie Trainor. Even her home in Huntsville was torn down shortly after her death. Winnie is seen here on the left.
Courtesy of Jane Loftus
On the anniversary of Tom Thomson’s death, a few people gather on the shore of Canoe Lake to see if he will appear. There is no question, for those who have seen him, that it is Tom.
As for Winnie Trainor, she never married, and she lived in Huntsville until her death. Jane Loftus pointed out that Miss Trainor would often travel to Canoe Lake and place flowers on the grave of Tom Thomson. Perhaps she never married because she knew he was still there with her. If she saw him and communicated with him, she kept it to herself.
Playwright Stina Nyquist, in her Tom Thomson play, The Shantyman’s Daughter, had Miss Trainor say this about herself: “I’m a slob. I’ve been one since that summer a long time ago. I let my hair go. I have soup stains on my blouse, my stockings are rumpled, and so on and so forth. It’s not that I’m a slob at heart. I’m not a natural-born slob. I just got that way, bit by bit, since that summer. But once every year, on this day, I dress up. I go to the beauty parlour, I put on this outfit, and this hat — if it’s not too windy. I got this dress for a special occasion that didn’t happen ...”
Gaye Clemson, born and raised in Toronto, now resides in Monterey Bay, California. In the early 1950s her father decided to make Algonquin Park a part of his life and purchased a lease on Canoe Lake. In 1954, her father and mother built a cabin on the leased land.
In the May 2006 issue of The Muskoka Magazine, journalist Meaghan Deemeester wrote an article entitled “Canoe Lake, Highlighting Clemson and the Thomson Mystery.”
“Thomson, who was an avid and accomplished canoeist, died on the lake in July, 1917. His body was found several days after his upturned canoe was spotted floating on the lake, and despite a four-inch cut/bruise on his left temple, and fishing line tied around his ankle, the authorities quickly deemed his death an accidental drowning.
“However, the residents of Canoe Lake feel differently, believing in most cases that foul play was involved. In fact, in the late 1970s, Clemson’s brother found the remains of a paddle stuck in the mud. She says, ‘After washing and careful examination of its weather-worn condition and the fact that there was a “cut” out of the blade that looked like it was an exact match to an adult male’s temple, he ascertained that it was in fact Tom’s long-lost paddle and by inference the long-lost murder weapon. It hangs to this day, from our cabin ceiling.”
Her passion for local history, and the tragic death surrounding Tom Thomson, led Clemson to create the Tom Thomson Murder Mystery Game. According to Deemeester, Clemson, in her game, looked at some of the theories behind Thomson’s death:
1. Winnie Trainor is pregnant, Thomson doesn’t want to marry her; she decides to do him in and make it look like an accident or he commits suicide as a way of getting out of marrying her.
2. Shannon Fraser owed him money and Thomson wanted it back in order to get a new suit to marry Trainor. He and Shannon get into an argument, Thomson falls, hits his head on the fireplace grate and dies. Fraser and Annie try to cover it up and make it look like an accident.
3. Thomson and Martin Bletcher have a disagreement about the course of the First World War at a local party and angry words are exchanged. Martin, by chance, meets Thomson the next day on the Drummer Lake Portage. They have words again, and Martin hits him with a paddle and he dies.
Deemeester also added, “According to current Ontario Parks government policy, all residential leaseholders will be obligated to either tear down or burn their buildings and ensure that the land is returned to its original state by 2017 — ironically, 100 years after the death of Thomson.”
There are many unexplained events on Canoe Lake. One young girl, Sarah, found a painting tucked in a crack in a tree and an old piece of wood inscribed with a biblical quote. Does she have a Tom Thomson original? Who is creating mystical art in Algonquin Park?
There are power boats on the lake now. There are mysteries, and there are many unanswered questions for the curious visitors.
Timmins
“The City with a heart of gold” — Timmins, “The Gold Capital,” located in the heartland of the greatest mineral-producing area in the Western Hemisphere.
Timmins has seen economic activity since the early French fur trade in 1678.The discovery of silver in Cobalt, in 1903, enabled Noah and Henry Timmins, general store operators, to make a small fortune. From there Noah and Henry went on to finance the development of claims that had been staked by prospectors Benny Hollinger and Alec Gillies, at Porcupine Camp, now Timmins. It was renamed in 1909 in honour of these two industrious men.
The first mining claim in the district was staked in May 1905 on the southwest shore of Nighthawk Lake by Edward Orr Taylor. The following year Reuben D’Aigle headed up a prospecting party in Tisdale Township.
The D’Aigle party made a very significant oversight. To their misfortune, they missed some fairly obvious rich gold showings that were merely covered by moss. It was Jack Wilson Massey who uncovered the Golden Staircase, as it was called, and it eventually became known as the Dome Mine.
Two Finnish prospectors, Victor Mansen and Harry Benella, made a gold discovery on Gold Island, in Nighthawk Lake, in 1907. The immediate finds, however, were not encouraging and the project was suspended. It was Charlie Auer who later staked a nearby claim that became the Nighthawk Peninsula Mine and, between 1924 and 1944, produced about $500,000 in gold.
Barber Benny Hollinger and his partner, Alec Gillies, made the first substantial strike, south of present-day Gillies Lake, in Timmins. Noah and Henry Timmins invested their money in the Hollinger interests, and the Hollinger Mine was incorporated in 1910. A property that was staked by Sandy McIntyre and Hans Buttner became the McIntyre Mine.
