Product Description

"An overturned canoe. A body recovered. Presumably Thomson drowned. That should have been the end of it. It was only the beginning." This book will be especially fascinating for all readers interested in: biography, history, the visual arts or true-life mysteries. Tom Thomson is perhaps Canada's most famous artist. His short and glorious career was abruptly and brutally ended on July 8, 1917. Since the recovery of Thomson's body, theories as to the cause of his death - accident? murder? - have preoccupied sleuths for more than 90 years.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2006992 in Books
• Published on: 2003-10-15
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 128 pages

From the Back Cover
Tom Thompson- The Life and Mysterious Death of the Famous Canadian Painter "An overturned canoe. A body recovered. Presumably Thomson drowned. That should have been the end of it. It was only the beginning." This book will be especially fascinating for all readers interested in: biography history visual arts mystery Tom Thomson is perhaps Canada's most famous artist. His short and glorious career was abruptly and brutally ended on July 8, 1917. Since the recovery of Thomson's body, theories as to the cause of his death - accident? murder? - have preoccupied sleuths for more than 90 years.

About the Author
Jim Poling Sr. is the author of two histories on outdoors themes, The Canoe: An Illustrated History (Key Porter 2000) and The Decoy (Key Porter 2001). In 2003 he published his first collection of short stories titled Lights in Dark Forests. He is a frequent contributor to Cottage Life magazine. He lives in Alliston, Ontario, but spends much of his time at his cottage not far from the Algonquin Park west boundary. He is the retired general manager and editor of The Canadian Press news agency.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Prologue The Ojibwa called them jiibyag - the ghosts. Their voices ride the night mists that slide quietly over the dark waters of Canoe Lake after the sun falls below the pines. They are most often heard off the three bigger islands - Wapomeo, Gilmour, and Cook - those sentinels that squat at mid lake as if to block access to the secrets that lie beyond. They whisper of amazing events that occurred here long ago. Sometimes the mist carries more than the voices. On some summer nights, it is said, a dove grey canoe emerges from the north bay and slides southward, seemingly riding the mist itself and not the water. In it sits a man in a tan bush shirt and holding a paddle. He waves, then disappears. The mist drifts to the western shore, then up the hillside overlooking the lake where a tiny graveyard struggles for its own existence against a relentless Mother Nature. Decaying picket fences and two tombstones gnawed by 10 decades of weather mark the graves of the two bodies officially buried there. One is a young man who died May 25, 1897, in a lumber mill accident. The other is a boy taken by a diphtheria epidemic at the lake. But there is a third occupant there. And therein lies a mystery. A mystery wrapped in mysteries that no one can ever explain completely. No one but the jiibyag.