Roy MacGregor’s books include Northern Light: The Enduring Mystery of Tom Thomson and the Woman Who Loved Him and, most recently, Paper Trails: From the Backwoods to the Front Page, a Life in Stories.
They are Canadian royalty.
In the small elementary school I attended in Ontario cottage country, the walls held a photograph of Queen Elizabeth II as well as several prints of art by the Group of Seven and Tom Thomson.
I was particularly captivated, as a youngster, by Thomson’s The West Wind, a large painting of a bending pine tree, waves rolling high on a lake in the background, high, rounded hills further beyond. Winnie Trainor – an eccentric neighbour and rumoured to be engaged to Thomson before his unfortunate death in Algonquin Park’s Canoe Lake in the summer of 1917 – said her Tom had painted it one day after a long walk along the shore of Fairy Lake, which bordered our town of Huntsville.
I once took a photograph of the painting out to the spot she suggested and, well, it seemed a possibility. I thought no more of it, much later learning that there was a dispute as to whether the actual location of The West Wind was in fact Grand Lake, where Thomson had worked in the summer of 1916, or nearby Couchon Lake, both in Algonquin Park. No mention at all of Fairy Lake.
Tom Thomson's The West Wind is an iconic work of Canadian art, but there are multiple theories about which Ontario lake inspired it.Photo by Craig Boyko/Art Gallery of Ontario
It never occurred to me that, for a few driven Canadians, staking out the original sites of such iconic paintings could be a compelling passion. There is something about these paintings that has an undeniable grip on the Canadian psyche. Perhaps it was ingrained in elementary school, so many of them with those prints on the otherwise barren walls. Perhaps it is as Ish Theilheimer, an Eastern Ontario playwright and musician who co-wrote the recent musical play Tom Thomson & The Colours of Canada, says: “It recalls a simpler time.”
The national champions of this curious hobby – nailing down actual sites – are Jim and Sue Waddington of Hamilton. Over the course of nearly half a century, the couple have tracked down and photographed the original locations for about 800 landscape paintings. They are most interested in the Group of Seven, which was founded in 1920 and stayed true to their mutual vision for more than a dozen years. In fact, the Group of Seven was eventually 11 landscape painters, the most famous being A.Y. Jackson, Lawren Harris and J.E.H. MacDonald. The group took its inspiration from their friend Thomson, who had died under mysterious circumstances three years earlier.
Since the Waddingtons began their unique hobby in 1977, they have travelled across the country in search of original scenes. They have paddled and hiked to places few others have ventured. They know exactly what they are looking for, having researched letters, artist’s notes, interviews, photographs and topographical maps. They carry copies of the original sketches and try to recreate and photograph the precise angle of the scene the artist chose.
“We once paddled to an island and got some help propping back up a fallen tree so that we could compare photos to an A.Y. Jackson painting,” says Jim, a retired professor at McMaster University.
Laughs Sue: “That’s what happens when you get a little crazy.”
The Waddingtons’ first successful “find” was the site of an A.Y. Jackson painting somewhere around Nellie Lake in Killarney Park, a wilderness area along Georgian Bay that is famous for the La Cloche Mountains, pink granite and striking white quartzite ridges.
At the time, Sue had left her nursing career to raise her family and, as a hobby, had joined a local rughookers group. She decided to recreate Jackson’s painting Hills Killarney (Nellie Lake) in her rug. As she worked, she became increasingly entranced by the beauty of the scene Jackson had sketched. What, she wondered, would it be like to see it in real life? Already avid canoeists, the Waddingtons decided to seek it out. It took a week of travel, paddling and portaging, but eventually they found the location.
They were hooked – and this time it had nothing to do with rugs.
“As kids we learned about the Group of Seven in school,” says Jim. “They were paintings of what people think this country looks like, the places where they think they would like to go. When I look at a painting I feel, ‘gee, I would like to go see that.’ ”
They took their photographs and “evidence” from the Nellie Lake excursion to the McMichael Art Gallery north of Toronto. The McMichael collection specializes in works by the Group of Seven and Tom Thomson. When the Waddingtons inquired as to how many other Group of Seven paintings had been tracked down and identified, they were stunned by the answer: “We don’t know.”
Their commitment was born that day. They would spend their holidays, and later their retirement, tracking down as many sites as they could. As Sue recently told CBC Radio’s The Current, “It keeps us busy.”
The Waddingtons' travels took them to Grace Lake, Ont, and the 'Carmichael Rock' where Franklin Carmichael is shown at work in 1935.Courtesy of Sue and Jim Waddington; Joachim Gauthier/McMichael Canadian Art Collection
For many years, they kept to flatwater paddle routes, but in their mid-70s, they became determined to paddle the rugged Agawa Canyon in Northwestern Ontario, where J.E.H. MacDonald had often painted. They had never paddled whitewater before, but there was no other option than to learn to shoot rapids and paddle in strong currents.
They hired a local guide and showed him several MacDonald sketches; he took them to multiple spots that were exactly as sketched nearly a century earlier.
“I don’t think he even knew who MacDonald was,” says Sue. “But he took us there and you could just stare – it was right in front of you.”
They have given about 300 well-received talks on their adventures. The Sudbury Art Gallery helped them and daughter, Nina, put together a book, In the Footsteps of the Group of Seven, which has sold more than 12,000 copies, with all profits donated back to the gallery.
There are others who share this unusual passion, and it isn’t always Canadians and landscape art. According to a recent article in The Guardian, an Italian geologist and Renaissance art historian named Ann Pizzorusso has found the background landscape for Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. Dr. Pizzorusso claims the bridge is the 14th-century Azzone Visconti bridge, the southwestern Alps overlooking Lake Garlate. No paddling required to get there.
The Mona Lisa, it should be noted, was painted more than 520 years ago, yet still obsesses people. The works of the Group and Tom Thomson go back only a century, yet their hold on Canadians seems infinite. Is there anyone out there seeking the actual locations of the works of Harold Town or Cornelius Krieghoff? Perhaps Emily Carr, but she has long been considered as significant as the Group or even Thomson.
Tom Thomson, at right with future Group of Seven member Arthur Lismer, would spend months canoeing Algonquin Park and sketching the vistas he found.Courtesy of John Little
The Waddingtons are not the only Canadians who enjoy this curious hobby. Bob and Diana McElroy of Point Alexander, Ont., have a particular interest in Thomson’s works. Both retired, the McElroys decided to research Thomson’s work in the Grand Lake area of Algonquin Park, close to where they live, and where Thomson spent months sketching. The McElroys and Waddingtons agree that Thomson’s famous Jack Pine was sketched at Grand Lake. As for The West Wind, the Waddingtons think the site was at Couchon Lake; the McElroys say more likely Grand Lake. Neither think Fairy Lake served as inspiration.
“A few people do not agree with you,” says Sue Waddington of the McElroys. “But we get along.”
Robert Hilscher is another site-searcher keenly interested in Thomson’s work. Originally from Cranbrook, B.C., Mr. Hilscher married into a family that lived on Oxtongue Lake, near the West Gate to Algonquin Park. He took to paddling the river all the way into the park to Canoe Lake. While working as a producer with CBC News, he read that an original piece of art by A.J. Casson, a late member of the Group of Seven, was coming up for sale. The painting was said to have been done along the Oxtongue River.
Mr. Hilscher became fascinated with Casson, who yearly came to the area to paint. The more he researched, the more he discovered that it wasn’t just Casson who loved this river, but also Thomson and others. He believed he found where Thomson’s Northern River was painted. Janine Marson, a local artist, agrees, believing Northern River was painted just behind where her parents had a small trading post along Highway 60.
Thomson's The Northern River (1915) was one of several Canadian artworks connected with this area of Algonquin Park.National Gallery of Canada
The real-life locations of his paintings are not the only mystery that Thomson left us. Did he drown in Canoe Lake in 1917, or was he murdered? The locals always believed the latter, his body surfacing more than a week later with line wrapped around one ankle and a deep bruise on his left temple. The body was deteriorating quickly under the summer sun, so his friends arranged a hasty burial at the little cemetery. A coroner came but never saw the body. The death was determined to be “accidental drowning.” Winifred Trainor, on behalf of the Thomson family, arranged for an undertaker to exhume the body and ship it to Leith, Ont., for burial in the family plot. The undertaker came, refused all help, worked through the night and in the morning had a sealed casket ready for loading at the train station. Decades later, in 1956, local men went to the little Canoe Lake cemetery and dug up a rotting casket that held human remains. The skull had a hole on the left temple.
Where, then, is the exact location of Thomson’s grave: Leith, or Canoe Lake? There are no sketches or artist’s notes to follow in this particular case. We can know where he painted, it seems, but not where he lies.
The Waddingtons were recently featured in a short documentary – Hidden Secrets of the Canvas: One Couple’s Lifetime Quest to Uncover a Century Old Mystery – by Timmins, Ont., filmmaker Brad Jennings. The charming 12-minute film, available on YouTube, grew out of a proposal by their son, Mike Waddington, that they retrace the route of their first successful “find” back in Killarney Park.
Could they do it? They were both 80 now, after all. They checked their old maps: 28 kilometres of paddling, seven kilometres of portaging canoe, paddles, camping equipment and supplies.
“We have a much lighter canoe now,” says Sue. “Half the weight of our first canoe.”
They decided to try it. Their son reached out to Brad Jennings, who, with his father Wayne, runs Explore the Backcountry, an adventure tourism operation, out of Timmins. Mr. Jennings, an accomplished filmmaker of wilderness adventures, was keen to document the journey. Mike and his wife Starr Waddington also went on the 2022 trip, though their 12-year-old daughter, Emma, who narrates the films, was unable to join.
In the documentary, Jim can be seen throwing their canoe up and onto his shoulders as if he were 18 again. The paddling turned out to be the easy part. The tricky bits were crossing streams and slippery rocks along the portages. The hardest part was the climb up the La Cloche hills to reach the high vista from which Jackson had painted.
“Isn’t that something?” Jim shouted when they reached their goal. “We did it!”
“Wasn’t that fun!” Sue responded, wrapping her husband in a huge hug that might have toppled them from the hilltop.
Two years later, the couple are still going strong. They did a six-hour orienteering session in the woods in May. They’re still chasing down original painting sites.
“We’re resting up for a while now,” says Sue. “But hoping to get back at it again soon.”
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