|
The home pages remain free of any charge. We need donations or subscriptions to continue. Please pass on this website link to your family, relatives, friends and clients. |
|
Skagit River JournalSubscribers Edition The most in-depth, comprehensive site about the Skagit Covers from British Columbia to Puget Sound. Counties covered: Skagit, Whatcom, Island, San Juan, Snohomish & BC. An evolving history dedicated to committing random acts of historical kindness |
 810 Central Ave., Sedro-Woolley, Washington, 98284Home of the Tarheel Stomp Mortimer Cook slept here & named the town Bug |
 |
 |
Neil goes on in this excerpt from his website to give details of how he conducted extensive research into the social mores and folkways of the period along with newspapers, music, poetry and books, all of which gave him material to flesh out the characters in his book. For those who have read other accounts of Tompson's mysterious death, they will certainly appreciate Neil's delineation of many of the key books and unpublished manuscripts. His comparison of the prior published theories and his notations about the contradictions between them was fascinating to a person like me who tries to sort out all the conflicting information and charges. I also appreciated that, while he certainly asserts his own point of view in the long-running argument about murder/suicide/accident, he leaves the ultimate decision to the reader.Alice Elinor Lambert's Role in Tom Thomson's Story Blodwen Davies personally hand-set and printed her book, A Study of Tom Thomson, in 1935. Perhaps, that explains why the book lacks footnotes, references and bibliography. The highly-prized copy I bought at http://www.alibris.com for $252.00 in November 2003 is No. 62 of a special edition of 100 bound by hand and signed by Ms. Davies.
In a Chapter III called "The Boy" she tells what she learned from Thomson's family and friends about the three years he spent in Seattle, Washington from 1901 to 1904. Ms. Davies never names any of them and offers no clue whatsoever for the source of the brief mention she makes of Tom's first girlfriend, who later biographers would learn was Alice Elinor Lambert.
"One more event occurred that completed the cycle of experiences that Seattle had in store for him. He fell in love. Friends and relatives knew next to nothing of the significance of that brief and tragic romance," she wrote. "Thomson was endowed with a depth of feeling that would have been incomprehensible to the inexperienced young woman he would meet in a west town coast thirty-odd ago (sic). Nobody knows exactly what happened. Some say the lady laughed."
When I first read this brief description, I was especially puzzled to understand why Ms. Davies had concluded that, despite the fact that his friends and relatives knew enough to "say the lady laughed", they "knew next to nothing of the significance of that brief and tragic romance." Was that her awkward way of saying that she recognized what they failed to appreciate? A paragraph later, Ms. Davies answered my question.
"This shadowy love affair was a very important event. Of the quality of the woman's love we know nothing, but the significant thing was Thomson's love for her. It was the sort of experience that might have turned him into an embittered man, if his love had been selfish and possessive."
In a following paragraph, Ms. Davies ends a particularly ethereal discussion of "love as a cosmic force often used as a means of personal gratification rather than as intended for the evolution of man into a creative being" by concluding, "Because of the results in Thomson's life, we know the quality of his love. He did not waste its force by blaming the woman but to set to work to alter the currents of his life."
Today's essay, 89 years after Tom Thomson drowned in Algonquin Park's Canoe Lake on July 8, 1917, asks and tries to answer what significance this 1904 romance had for Tom Thomson, age 27, and Alice Elinor Lambert, age 18. Much of what is known today comes from the extensive research of Joan Murray, author of numerous books about the painting and life of Tom Thomson. Born in New York, in 1943, Ms. Murray studied art history at the University of Toronto, receiving an Honours B.A. (1965). After earning her M.A. at Columbia University (1966), she returned to University of Toronto for her doctorate. From 1970 to 1973, she worked as the first Curator of Canadian Art at the Art Gallery of Ontario. From 1974 to 1999, Ms. Murray directed the Robert McLaughlin Gallery in Oshawa. Since then, she has organized more than 100 exhibitions and written many books on Canadian art. For the last several years, she served as interim executive director and chief executive officer of the McMichael Canadian Art Collection in Kleinburg, Ontario.
While waiting page proofs of Algonquin Elegy, I found a website, which re-published an article about Alice Elinor Lambert from the Skagit River Journal of History and Folklore, written and edited by Noel V. Bourasaw called and "Alice Elinor Lambert and Elizabeth Poehlman and their quest for history and a special guest — painter Tom Thomson." I had learned much researching Lambert family history. Adding to my understanding was additional genealogical work on the family of Pitt Pill and Mabel A. Shaw.
I knew that Tom's younger brother, Ralph, and a Thomson friend, Horace Rutherford, boarded together at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Shaw in Seattle, where 18-year-old Alice had come from Portland to stay on weekends over the summer of 1904 while she work as a saleslady in a millenary shop owned by her aunt's family. I also knew that Horace had been fingered as a suitor of marriage to Alice that may have ruptured Tom romance with her. I knew that she would finish high school in Seattle the following year. Finally, I'd read her romance novel, Women Are Like That, which was published by Dell in 1934.
Some earlier biographers said Tom, too, was boarding with Mr. and Mrs. Shaw, when Alice arrived from Portland. Others said he stayed at the home of Charles C. Maring, a friend of his older brother, George Thomson. Joan Murray reported that Tom and Horace Rutherford returned to Owen Sound in 1904. U.S. Census records verified that Ralph Thomson married Ruth Shaw, older daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Shaw, in 1906.
In November 1971, when Alice was 85-years-old, she corresponded with Joan Murray, telling a brief tale of her romance with Tom Thomson. Little of what Alice wrote is possible to verify. "I recall him standing by the piano, while Mrs. Shaw . . . played . . . . One of his favorites was In the Shade of the Sheltering Palm. He would stand there tall and dark and slender, singing in his clear tenor, and the other boarders, the family and I would sit around and beg him to sing."
Neil first visited Ontario's Algonquin Provincial Park in 1976. On that first five-day canoe trip, he was introduced to the true story of Canadian landscape painter, Tom Thomson, who drowned on July 8, 1917, in the Park's Canoe Lake. Visiting the Park almost every summer for a week to 10 days, with side trips to Owen Sound, Toronto, Kleinberg, South River, and Ottawa, Neil toured all of the Ontario museums with paintings by Thomson and he collected most of the Thomson art books and earlier biographies. Over the last 30 years, he has taken several whitewater canoe courses and tandem paddled many sections of the Oxtongue, Ottawa, Magnetawan and Madawaska Rivers in the Algonquin area.We urge any reader interested in these two fascinating characters or in early-20th century history to read this book. You should be able to order Lehto's book (ISBN13: 978-0-595-36132-8) through your favorite bookseller or via Amazon and other online sites. Neil notes that the book is available to booksellers through the two big wholesalers, Baker & Thompson and Ingram Group. You can also contact him through his excellent website link below, which also gives you more information about Neil, Algonquin Park and the book itself, plus a comparison of scenarios in the other Tompson biographies
He began the writing of Algonquin Elegy: Tom Thomson's Last Spring, in 1994, completing several character sketches for an on-line writing class, starting with a character he then called Northway Jon O'Connor, described as returning to Algonquin Park to investigate the drowning of Tom Thomson following a bitter divorce.
Northway Jon O'Connor became Jon Kristian in the final writing of the book. Most of the other fictional characters, Howard Hancock, Dixie Waterford and Lucky Haskins, emerged from these writing exercises. Here's an interesting little-known fact — their names come from freeway exit signs along I-75 and I-69, which Neil passed while traveling to conferences and meetings with municipal clients in Michigan, Ohio and Indiana.
In chapters of the book called "Kristian's Notebook," Lehto tells the carefully researched Tom Thomson's story. He gathered particularly important insights from a visit to the Trent University in Petersbourough, Ontario, to personally inspect Algonquin Park Ranger Mark Robinson's 1917 daily journal with permission from the family of his daughter, Ottelyn Addison.
He obtained copies of telegrams and letters relating to Tom Thomson from files of Dr. James MacCallum, M.D., bequeathed to the National Gallery of Canada and others from the files of the Owen Sound Public Library. Neil received invaluable advice and assistance from Thomson experts, Joan Murray, former chief executive officer of the McMichael Canadian Art Collection, and Roy MacGregor, national columnist for the Globe & Mail. He corresponded with many others, including Dr. Phil Hall, M.D., professor of obstetrics/gynecology at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg.
|
|
|
|
|
Would you like information about how to join them? Jones and Solveig Atterberry, NorthWest Properties Aiken & Associates: . . . See our websitePlease let us show you residential and commercial property in Sedro-Woolley and Skagit County 2204 Riverside Drive, Mount Vernon, Washington . . . 360 708-8935 . . . 360 708-1729 Oliver Hammer Clothes Shop at 817 Metcalf Street in downtown Sedro-Woolley, 86 years. Joy's Sedro-Woolley Bakery-Cafe at 823 Metcalf Street in downtown Sedro-Woolley. Check out Sedro-Woolley First section for links to all stories and reasons to shop here firstor make this your destination on your visit or vacation. Are you looking to buy or sell a historic property, business or residence?We may be able to assist. Email us for details. Peace and quiet at the Alpine RV Park, just north of Marblemount on Hwy 20Park your RV or pitch a tent by the Skagit River, just a short drive from Winthrop or Sedro-Woolley |
|
|
Tip: Put quotation marks around a specific name or item of two words or more, and then experiment with different combinations of the words without quote marks. We are currently researching some of the names most recently searched for — check the list here. Maybe you have searched for one of them? |
|
|
 View My Guestbook Sign My Guestbook |
 Mail copies/documents to Street address: Skagit River Journal, 810 Central Ave., Sedro-Woolley, WA, 98284. |