Defiant Spirits (54 page)

30.
Toronto Daily Mail & Empire,
13 March 1915;
Saturday Night,
20 March 1915.

31. Minnie Henry to Blodwen Davies, 2 February 1931, Blodwen Davies Fonds,
MG
30
D
38,
LAC
. For the costs of pigments, see Frank Johnston's account scribbled on the back of a letter from George Wilson, 30 May 1922, Mary Bishop Rodrik and Franz Johnston Collection,
R
320, Volume 1, File 10,
LAC
. Johnston records paying $24 for twenty-one tubes of paint.

32.
The Studio,
February 1915.

33. Franklin Carmichael to Ada Went, 23 March 1915,
MCAC
Archives.

34. F.H. Varley to Dr. James M. MacCallum, October 1914, Dr. James M. MacCallum Papers.

35. Chalmers, “Arthur Heming,” pp. 9–10.

36. William Broadhead to the Broadhead family,
LD
1980/6 and 34, Sheffield Archives.

37. Comacchio,
The Infinite Bonds of Family,
p. 72

38. Franklin Carmichael, Bolton,
ON
, to Ada Went, 25 May 1915,
MCAC
Archives.

CHAPTER 2: THE GREAT EXPLOSION

1. Quoted in Nicholson,
Canadian Expeditionary Force, 1914–1919,
p. 62.

2. Colonel A. Fortescue Duguid,
Official History of the Canadian Forces in The Great War, 1914–1919,
2 vols. (Ottawa: King's Printer, 1938), vol. 1, app. 851.

3.
The Times,
15 May 1915.

4. Martin Gilbert,
The First World War
(London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1994), p. 162.
The veracity of the crucifixion story, disputed by the Germans at the time, has never been established. For a discussion of the episode, see Paul Fussell,
The Great War and Modern Memory
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975), pp. 117–18, where it is described as a “fiction.”

5. A.Y. Jackson, 69 Hallowell Ave., Westmount, Montreal, to Arthur Lismer,
4 February 1915,
MCAC
Archives.

6. Ibid.

7. Jackson,
A Painter's Country,
p. 41.

8. Terry Copp, “The Military Effort, 1914–1918,” in David MacKenzie, ed.,
Canada and the First World War: Essays in Honour of Robert Craig Brown
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005), p. 59, note 32.

9. Jackson,
A Painter's Country,
p. 41.

10. Franklin Carmichael to Ada Went, February 1915,
MCAC
Archives.

11. Darroch,
Bright Land,
p. 25.

12. Stacey and Bishop,
J.E.H. MacDonald, Designer,
p. 119.

13. Thoreau MacDonald Collection, The Papers of L. Bruce Pierce, Binder 1, File 25,
MCAC
Archives.

14. Albert H. Robson,
J.E.H. MacDonald
(Toronto: Ryerson Press, 1937), p.4.

15.
Canadian Courier,
22 July 1916. MacDonald's poster design for
Belgium
was printed
in this issue as a black and white illustration to a poem by Sidney Low, “From the
Body of This Death.”

16. Quoted in J. Murray, “Tom Thomson's Letters,” in Reid,
Tom Thomson,
p. 301.

17. R.P. Little, “Some Recollections of Tom Thomson,” p. 218.

18. Mark Robinson, transcript of interview, p. 7.

19. Minnie Henry to Blodwen Davies, 2 February 1931, Blodwen Davies Fonds.

20. Ian Hugh Maclean Miller,
Our Glory and Our Grief: Torontonians and the Great War
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002), pp. 71, 79. On Carmichael's rejection,
see Bice,
Sunlight & Shadow,
p. 17.

21. Percy Ghent, “Tom Thomson at Island Camp, Round Lake, November 1915,”
Toronto Evening Telegram,
8 November 1949.

22. E.E. Godin to Blodwen Davies, 15 June 1931, Blodwen Davies Fonds. Godin was
with Thomson in the summer of 1916 and insisted, “I know up until that time
he had not tried to enlist.”

23.
Toronto Daily Star,
13 October 1914.

24. Winnifred Trainor to George Thomson, 17 September 1917, Tom Thomson Collection, Vol. 1, File 5,
MG
30
D
284,
LAC
.

25. Quoted in J. Murray, “Tom Thomson's Letters,” in Reid,
Tom Thomson,
p. 300.

26. See, for example, the
Toronto Daily Star,
12 July 1916.

27. Mark Robinson, transcript of interview, p. 9.

28. Quoted in J. Murray, “Tom Thomson's Letters,” in Reid,
Tom Thomson,
p. 302.

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

30. Hill, “Tom Thomson, Painter,” in Reid,
Tom Thomson,
p. 131.

31. Dr. James M. MacCallum Papers, National Gallery of Canada Archives, quoted in
J. Murray, “Tom Thomson's Letters,” in Reid,
Tom Thomson,
p. 302.

32. Ibid., p. 301.

33. Henry,
Travels and Adventures in Canada and the Indian Territories,
p. 29.

34. L. George Thomas,
Edward Thomas: A Portrait
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), pp. 242, 248; and
The Life and Letters of Edward Thomas,
ed. John Moore
(London: Heinemann, 1939), p. vii.

35. Tom Thomson, Mowat Lodge, Canoe Lake, to J.E.H. MacDonald, 22 July 1915,
Tom Thomson Collection,
MCAC
Archives.

36.
Water Flowers
and
Wildflowers
(
MCAC
);
Marguerites, Wood Lilies and Vetch
(Art Gallery of Ontario);
Canadian Wildflowers
(National Gallery of Canada).

37. “Krakatoa Provided Backdrop to Munch's
Scream,
”
The Age,
11 December 2003;
“
The Scream,
East of Krakatoa,”
New York Times,
8 February 2004; “How Old Masters
Are Helping Study of Global Warming,”
The Guardian,
1 October 2007. The theory
about Munch and Krakatoa was first put forward by Texas State University professors
Don Olson, Marilynn Olson and Russell Doescher. For reports of the 1915 earthquake
in California, see the
New York Times,
22 and 23 May 1915.

38. David Lee,
Lumber Kings and Shantymen: Logging, Lumber and Timber in the Ottawa
Valley
(Toronto: James Lorimer & Co., 2006), p. 179.

39. Oxley,
The Young Woodsman,
p. 87.

40. Lee,
Lumber Kings and Shantymen,
pp. 48–49.

41. This image has been noted by Andrew Hunter, who notes that the cross
“seems so obvious and perfectly positioned that it is hard to believe it wasn't
intentional” (“Mapping Tom,” in Reid,
Tom Thomson,
p. 34).

42. Quoted in Jonathan Vance,
Death So Noble: Memory, Meaning, and the
First World War
(Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1997), p. 51.

43.
Toronto Daily Star,
1 May 1915. See also the front-page report on 1 June 1915,
which describes “little wooden crosses on which is rudely painted the man's
name, number, and the regiment.”

44. Leonard V. Smith, Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau, and Annette Becker,
France and the Great War, 1914–1918
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003),
p. 169; and Fussell,
The Great War and Modern Memory,
p. 118.

45. Jay Winter,
Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning: The Great War in European Cultural History
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), p. 92; and Alan Gordon,
Making Public Pasts: The Contested Terrain of Montreal's Public Memories, 1891–1930
(Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2001), p. 99.

CHAPTER 3: WHITE FEATHERS AND TANGLED GARDENS

1. Jackson,
A Painter's Country,
p. 42.

2. Ibid.

3. L.C. Giles,
Liphook, Bramshott and the Canadians
(Liphook, Hants: Bramshott
and Liphook Preservation Society, 1986).

4. A.Y. Jackson, letter postmarked 27 January 1916, Bramshott, Hants, to
Georgina Jackson, Naomi Jackson Grove Fonds, Box 96, File 19.

5. A.Y. Jackson, Bramshott Camp, Hants, to J.E.H. MacDonald, Studio Building,
J.E.H. MacDonald Fonds, Container 1, File 2,.

6. Quoted in Alexander John Watson,
Marginal Man: The Dark Vision of Harold Innis
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006), p. 86.

7. A.Y. Jackson, undated letter, “Somewhere in France,” to Georgina Jackson,
Naomi Jackson Grove Fonds, Box 96, File 19.

8.
The Studio,
15 June 1917.

9. M.O. Hammond, “Journal, 1903–1934,” 10 December 1915, M.O. Hammond Fonds,
Archives of Ontario. I am grateful to Scott James for this source.

10. Quoted in Ian E. Wilson, “Creating the Future: Canada and Its Provinces,”
in Yvan Lamonde, Patricia Lockhart Fleming, and Fiona A. Black, eds.,
The History of the Book in Canada, vol. 2, 1840–1914
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005), p. 175.

11. Hammond, “Journal, 1903–1934,” 10 December 1915. For speculation that the lumberjack is modelled on Thomson, see Landry,
The MacCallum-Jackman Cottage Mural Paintings,
p. 33.

12. Quoted in Madsen,
The Art Nouveau Style,
p. 246. The term “cloisonné” refers to the line of metal surrounding the coloured areas in medieval enamel techniques.

13. Quoted in Philip Ball,
Bright Earth: The Invention of Colour
(London: Viking, 2001), p. 153.

14. Quoted in Charles A. Riley
II
,
Color Codes: Modern Theories of Color in Philosophy,
Painting and Architecture, Literature, Music and Psychology
(Lebanon,
NH
: University
Press of New England, 1995), p. 73.

15. Quoted in Robinson, “Honey, I'm Home,” in Ballantyne,
What is Architecture?,
p. 122.

16.
Toronto Daily Mail & Empire,
11 March 1916.

17.
Toronto Daily Star,
11 March 1916.

18.
Saturday Night,
18 March 1916. Ruskin's attack on Whistler was published in
Fors Clavigera,
July 1877.

19. Quoted in Bishop, “MacDonald and the Club,” in Stacey and Bishop,
J.E.H. MacDonald, Designer,
p. 113.

20.
Saturday Night,
September 1906, April 1911, August 1915. These articles are reprinted in Thomas Thorner and Thor Frohn-Nielsen, eds.,
A Country Nourished
on Self-Doubt: Documents in Post-Confederation Canadian History
(Peterborough: Broadview Press, 2003), pp. 124–25, 218.

21.
Toronto Daily Star,
16 March 1916. Ahrens's article, on p. 3, is entitled “The New Schools
of Art.”

22. For biographical information on Ahrens, I am indebted to Kim Bullock.

23. Madonna Ahrens, “Carl Ahrens: His Life and Work,” unpublished manuscript
in the archival collection of Kim Bullock.

24.
The Lamps,
December 1911.

25. Madonna Ahrens, “Carl Ahrens: His Life and Work.”

26. See G.S. Simes, “Slang Terms for Homosexuals in English,” in Wayne Dynes, ed.,
Encyclopedia of Homosexuality
(New York: Garland, 1990), p. 1202; and Richard A. Spears, “On the Etymology of Dike,”
American Speech
60 (Winter 1985), p. 318.

27. Quoted in S.K. Tillyard,
The Impact of Modernism: The Visual Arts in Edwardian England
(London: Routledge, 1988), p. 121. For “greenery-yallery,” see Miranda B. Hickman,
The Geometry of Modernism: The Vorticist Idiom in Lewis, Pound, H.D. and Yeats
(Austin: University of Texas Press, 2005), p. 266, note 38. The term was first used to
mock aesthetes in Gilbert and Sullivan's
Patience
(1881).

28.
Saturday Night,
8 April 1916.

29. Kafka,
Letter to His Father,
trans. Ernst Kaiser and Eithne Wilkins
(New York: Schocken Books, 1953), p. 99.

30.
Toronto Daily Star,
10 August 1915.

31.
Toronto Daily Star,
28 September 1914. See also the report in the
Daily Star
on
12 September 1914.

32.
Toronto Daily Star,
28 December 1915.

33. Quoted in Jeffrey A. Keshen,
Propaganda and Censhorship during Canada's Great War
(Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 1996), p. 21.

34. W.R. Chadwick,
The Battle for Berlin, Ontario: An Historical Drama
(Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1992), p. 68.

35. Quoted in Brown and R. Cook,
Canada, 1896–1921,
p. 219.

36. Quoted in Miller,
Our Glory and Our Grief,
p. 112.

37. Quoted in Brown and R. Cook,
Canada, 1896–1921,
p. 219.

38. Quoted in Tippett,
Stormy Weather,
p. 85.

39. J.E.H. MacDonald, Studio Building, Toronto, to the editor,
Toronto Daily Star,
17 March 1916,
MCAC
Archives.

40. Uttley,
A History of Kitchener,
pp. 85–86.

41. For the Breithaupts' experiences in Berlin (and then Kitchener) during the Great War,
see Chadwick,
The Battle for Berlin,
pp. 60–73.

42.
Toronto Globe,
27 March 1916.

43.
Exhibition of Contemporary Scandinavian Art,
p. 58.

44. MacDonald's inscription can be seen on p. 130 of the copy of the Albright catalogue held in the
MCAC
Archives.

45.
Canadian Magazine,
April 1912;
The Studio,
December 1918.