Defiant Spirits (49 page)

Book i

CHAPTER 1: A WILD DESERTED SPOT

1. Quoted in Jasen,
Wild Things,
p. 108.

2. “2006 Census Highlights, Fact Sheet 2: Population Counts: Urban and Rural,” Ministry of Finance, Government of Ontario,
http://www.fin.gov.on.ca/english/economy/demographics/census/cenhi06-2.pdf
.

3.
The Times,
24 May 1911.

4. Mark Robinson, transcript of interview, p. 1, in the Tom Thomson Collection, McMichael Canadian Art Collection Archives (hereafter cited as
MCAC
Archives). For Harry B. Jackson's recollections of the expedition, see Harry B. Jackson to Blodwen Davies,
5 May 1931, Blodwen Davies Fonds, Vol. 11,
MG
30
D
38, Library and Archives Canada,
Ottawa (hereafter cited as
LAC
).

5. R.P. Little, “Some Recollections of Tom Thomson and Canoe Lake,”
Culture
16 (1955), p. 213.

6. Ottelyn Addison and Elizabeth Harwood,
Tom Thomson: The Algonquin Years
(Toronto: McGraw-Hill, 1969), p. 13.

7. Quoted in Cole, “Artists, Patrons and Public,” p. 71. The Torontonian was Taylor Statten, the Secretary of Boys' Work at the Toronto Central
YMCA
and later the founder of Camp Ahmek.

8. Harry B. Jackson to Blodwen Davies, 29 April 1931, Blodwen Davies Fonds.

9. S.H.F. Kemp, “A Recollection of Tom Thomson,” October 1955, typescript in the Tom Thomson Collection,
MCAC
Archives.

10. Fraser Thomson to Blodwen Davies, 19 May 1930, Blodwen Davies Fonds.

11. Quoted in Andrew C. Holman, “‘Cultivation' and the Middle-Class Self: Manners and Morals in Victorian Ontario,” in Edgar-André Montigny and Lori Chambers, eds.,
Ontario Since Confederation: A Reader
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000), p. 111.

12. Kemp, “A Recollection of Tom Thomson.”

13. Albert H. Robson,
Canadian Landscape Painters
(Toronto: Ryerson, 1932), p. 138.

14. A.Y. Jackson, London, to J.E.H. MacDonald, 26 August 1917,
MCAC
Archives.

15. Marion Long to Robert and Signe McMichael, undated letter,
MCAC
Archives.

16. Mark Robinson to Blodwen Davies, 23 March 1930, Blodwen Davies Fonds.

17. Quoted in J. Murray,
Tom Thomson: Design for a Canadian Hero,
p. 36.

18. For Thomson's family background, see Littlefield,
The Thomsons of Durham.

19. Louise Henry to Blodwen Davies, 11 March 1931, Blodwen Davies Fonds.

20. Ibid.

21. J.E.H. MacDonald, “A Landmark of Canadian Art,”
The Rebel
(November 1917),
reprinted in Fetherling,
Documents in Canadian Art,
p. 39.

22. Louise Henry to Blodwen Davies, 11 March 1931, Blodwen Davies Fonds.

23. Quoted in Littlefield,
The Thomsons of Durham,
p. 38.

24. As late as the 1920s, almost 70 per cent of Canadian men earned less than $1,000 per year: see Cynthia R. Comacchio,
The Infinite Bonds of Family: Domesticity in Canada,
1850–1940
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999), p. 72. For Toronto house prices, see R. Harris,
Unplanned Suburbs: Toronto's American Tragedy, 1900–1950
(Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), p. 225. For Canadian farm prices, see Bruno Ramirez,
Crossing the 49th Parallel: Migration from Canada to the United States, 1900–1930
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001), p. 89.

25. Alan H. Ross to Blodwen Davies, 11 June 1930, Blodwen Davies Fonds.

26. Louise Henry to Blodwen Davies, 11 March 1931, Blodwen Davies Fonds.

27. Alan H. Ross to Blodwen Davies, 11 June 1930, Blodwen Davies Fonds.

28. Alan H. Ross to Blodwen Davies, 1 June 1930, Blodwen Davies Fonds.

29. See Robert Stacey, “Tom Thomson as Applied Artist,” in Reid,
Tom Thomson,
pp. 50–51.

30. For the various (improbable) versions of this story, see J. Murray,
Tom Thomson: Design for a Canadian Hero,
pp. 32–33. For a critical eye on the legend, see Sherrill Grace's comments in
Inventing Tom Thomson,
pp. 66–67, 80.

31. Alice Lambert,
Women Are Like That
(New York: Dell, 1934), pp. 20–21.

32. Robson,
Canadian Landscape Painters,
p. 138. Robson, later Thomson's boss at Grip and then Rous and Mann, was at pains to point out that he himself found Thomson
“a most diligent, reliable and capable craftsman” (ibid.).

33. J. Murray,
Tom Thomson: Design for a Canadian Hero,
p. 36.

34. William J. Wood, Midland,
ON
, to Arthur Lismer, 2 January 1925,
MCAC
Archives.

35. Ibid. Wood specifically mentions “Broadhead, Varley, Thompsons [
sic
], MacLean,
Johnson [
sic
], Robson, Carmichael, MacDonald.”

CHAPTER 2: THIS WEALTHY PROMISED LAND

1. Quoted in Jarrett Rudy,
The Freedom to Smoke: Tobacco Consumption and Identity
(Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2005), p. 51. For Thomson's fondness for tobacco, see Harry B. Jackson to Blodwen Davies, 5 May 1931, Blodwen Davies Fonds.

2. Quoted in Stacey and Bishop,
J.E.H. MacDonald, Designer,
p. 1. The visitor was MacDonald's son, Thoreau.

3. Typescript of Thoreau MacDonald's recollections, Tom Thomson Collection,
MCAC
Archives, p. 2.

4. William Smithson Broadhead, Correspondence addressed to members of the Broadhead family,
LD
1980/29 and 32, Sheffield Archives, Sheffield, South Yorkshire.

5. Quoted in R. Cook,
The Regenerators,
p. 124. On Bengough's career and platforms, see ibid., pp. 123–51. See also Christina Burr, “Gender, Sexuality and Nationalism in
J.W. Bengough's Verses and Political Cartoons,”
Canadian Historical Review
83
(December 2002), pp. 505–54.

6. Quoted in Michele H. Bogart,
Artists, Advertising and the Borders of Art
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), p. 114.

7. William Broadhead to the Broadhead family,
LD
1980/28, Sheffield Archives.

8. Rupert Brooke,
Letters from America
(London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1916),
pp. 79, 80, 82.

9.
Toronto Globe,
16 March 1900.

10. Quoted in P.G. Mackintosh, “‘The Development of Higher Urban Life' and the Geographic Imagination: Beauty, Art, and Moral Environmentalism in Toronto, 1900–1920,”
Journal of Historical Geography
31 (October 2005), p. 697.

11. Quoted in Norman Hillmer and Adam Chapnick, eds., “Introduction: An Abundance of Nationalisms,” in
Canadas of the Mind: The Making and Unmaking of Canadian Nationalisms in the Twentieth Century
(Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's
University Press, 2007), p. 3.

12. Quoted in R. Douglas Francis and Chris Kitzan, eds., “Introduction,” in
The Prairie West as Promised Land
(Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2007), p. ix.

13.
Montreal Daily Star,
16 September 1911.

14. J.M. Bumstead,
Canada's Diverse Peoples: A Reference Sourcebook
(Santa Barbara:
ABC
-
CLIO
, 2003), p. 162; and Paul Robert Magocsi, ed.,
Encyclopedia of Canada's Peoples,
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999), pp. 144, 1093.

15. J. Burgon Bickersteth,
Land of Open Doors: Being Letters from Western Canada
(London: Wells Gardner, Darton & Co., 1914), p. x.

16. Quoted in Brown and R. Cook,
Canada, 1896–1921,
p. 73.

17.
Strangers within Our Gates: Or, Coming Canadians
(1909), reprinted with an introduction by Marilyn Barber (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1972), pp. 9, 244.
The author was the Methodist social gospeller J.S. Woodsworth, who would later
adopt a more tolerant attitude towards immigrants to the Prairies.

18. Quoted in Brown and R. Cook,
Canada, 1896–1921,
p. 165.

19. Émile Durkheim,
The Elementary Forms of Religious Life,
trans. K.E. Fields
(New York: Free Press, 1995). For the lack of heroes in (English) Canada, see Ramsay Cook,
Watching Quebec: Selected Essays
(Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University
Press, 2005), pp. 98–100. Cook points out that early Canadian heroes—he cites
Brébeuf and Dollard des Ormeaux—“are nearly all French” (ibid., p. 99).

20. Richard Hakluyt,
Voyages and Discoveries,
ed. Jack Beeching (London: Penguin, 1972), p. 191.

21.
Speculations: Essays on Humanism and the Philosophy of Art,
ed. Herbert Read (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1949), p. 73. This work was first published
(posthumously) in 1924.

22.
Criterion,
April 1924.

23.
The Collected Writings of T.E. Hulme,
ed. Karen Csengeri (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), p. 53.

24. Sir John Douglas Sutherland Campbell, the Marquess of Lorne,
Memories of Canada and Scotland: Speeches and Verse
(London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington, 1894), p. 220.

25.
The Canadian Magazine,
November 1908.

26. Quoted in Reid,
A Concise History of Canadian Painting,
p. 124.

27. The young art student was A.Y. Jackson: A.Y. Jackson, Berlin,
ON
, to Georgina Jackson,
Montreal, 1 June 1910, Naomi Jackson Grove Fonds,
LAC
,
MG
30 D351, Container 96, File 12.

28. Quoted in Harper,
Painting in Canada,
pp. 215–16.

29.
Morning Post,
4 July 1910.

30. Quoted in Hunter, “Mapping Tom,” in Reid,
Tom Thomson,
p. 45.

31. For an Algonquin Provincial Park example, see Gaye I. Clemson,
Gertrude Baskerville, the Lady of Algonquin Park
(Capitola,
CA
: Globalinkage, 2001), p. 1.

32. P.L. Simmons,
Franklin and the Arctic Regions
(London: George Routledge
& Co., 1853), pp. 44–46.

33. Quoted in Whiteman,
J.E.H. MacDonald,
pp. 14, 66.

34. C. Barry Cleveland to Joan MacDonald, 27 November 1932,
MCAC
Archives.

35. J.E.H. MacDonald, 40 Duggan Ave., Toronto, to F.B. Housser, unsent letter,
20 December 1926,
MCAC
Archives.

36. J.E.H. MacDonald, London, to Joan MacDonald, 15 July 1906,
MCAC
Archives.
MacDonald states that the painting was in the South Kensington Museum
(now the Victoria & Albert Museum).

37.
The Canadian Magazine,
May 1908.

38. Augustus Bridle,
The Story of the Club
(Toronto: Arts and Letters Club, 1945), p. 10.

39. Quoted in Karen A. Finlay,
The Force of Culture: Vincent Massey and Canadian Sovereignty
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004), p. 95.

40. Quoted in Nasgaard,
The Mystic North,
p. 161. Jefferys's comments come from a speech delivered in London, Ontario, in May 1944 and subsequently in Toronto in
March 1945.

41.
The Lamps,
November 1911.

42. Hamlin Garland, “Impressionism,” in Charles Harrison, Paul Wood, and Jason Gaiger, eds.,
Art in Theory, 1815–1900: An Anthology of Changing Ideas
(Oxford: Blackwell, 1998), p. 930.

43. Quoted in Kelly,
J.E.H. MacDonald, Lewis Smith, Edith Smith,
p. 12.

chapter 3: ein toronto realist

1. Lawren Harris, “The Group of Seven in Canadian History,”
The Canadian Historical Association: Report of the Annual Meeting Held at Victoria and Vancouver, June 16–19, 1948
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1948), p. 31.

2. A.J. Casson, “Group Portrait,” in Fetherling,
Documents in Canadian Art,
p. 59.

3.
Hamilton Spectator,
11 February 1897.

4.
Canadian Bookman,
February 1924. For Harris's early years, see Larisey,
“The Landscape Painting of Lawren Stewart Harris,” pp. 1–22.

5. Arthur Shadwell,
Industrial Efficiency: A Comparative Study of Industrial Life in England, Germany and America
(London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1906), p. 159.

6. “The Beauty of Form and Decorative Art,” in Charles Harrison and Paul Wood, eds.,
Art in Theory, 1900–1990: An Anthology of Changing Ideas
(Oxford: Blackwell, 1992), p. 62.

7. Quoted in Sue Prideaux,
Edvard Munch: Behind the Scream
(New Haven: Yale
University Press, 2006), p. 136.

8. Quoted in ibid., p. 138.

9. Quoted in Marion F. Deshmukh, “Max Liebermann: Observations on the
Politics of Painting in Imperial Germany, 1870–1914,”
German Studies Review
3
(May 1980), p. 171.

10. Quoted in Peter Paret,
The Berlin Secession: Modernism and Its Enemies in Imperial Germany
(Cambridge,
MA
: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1980), p. 38.

11. Quoted in Larisey, “The Landscape Painting of Lawren Stewart Harris,” p. 23.

12. Ibid., pp. 39, 44.

13. Quoted in Bess Harris and R.G.P Colgrove,
Lawren Harris
(Toronto: Macmillan, 1969), p. 219.

14. Emily Carr,
Growing Pains,
with an introduction by Robin Laurence and a foreword
by Ira Dilworth (Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 2005), p. 263.
Growing Pains
was originally published in 1946.