Book Launch for The Tom Thomson Mystery Announced.

To learn more about Nancy's books please click on the cover above.  

https://bookswelove.net/authors/canadian-historical-mysteries/

 

I'm happy to announce that the book launch for The Tom Thomson Mystery will be on November 16, 2024 at 1pm MST. The Purple Platypus Bookstore 5003B 50 Avenue in Castor Alberta will be hosting me and I'm thrilled to work with Lynn Sabo, the owner. There will be refreshments and perhaps some swag.

Here is an advance reader's review:

Thomas Thomson was a Canadian artist best known for his landscapes. He spent his summers capturing the scenery in Algonquin Park, Central Ontario, first in oil sketches on small wooden panels and then producing larger works on canvas during the winter in Toronto. His best-known piece of work is The Jack Pine. What isn’t so well known is how Tom died. On July 8^th, 1917, Tom’s canoe was found overturned in Canoe Lake, not far from where he set out. His body wasn’t discovered until July 16, 1917, also floating in the lake close to where the canoe was found 8 days earlier.Was he murdered? Did he commit suicide? Or was his death accidental? Nobody knows.

Nancy M. Bell has skillfully woven the threads of fact and fiction in her rendition of what might have happened. Her protagonist is young Harriet St. George, a very modern-minded young lady who loves escaping her strict family, particularly her stern father. She also summers at Mowat Lodge on Canoe Lake in the Park. She loves to tramp through the woods, canoe, fish, and paint to her heart’s content. Her friend Winnie Trainor, also a summer visitor, is sweet on Tom, while Harriet appreciates his skill as an artist and does her best to emulate him. But then Tom is missing.

Harriet suspects the Lodge managers, Shannon and Annie Fraser, of being involved in illegal activities. Who should she turn to for help? Besides Winne, the Park Ranger, Mark Robinson, is the only person she can share her suspicions with. All the characters are clearly introduced and have their place in the story of the search for Tom. The ending is unexpected and dramatic, and some readers may not see it coming, but it is an entirely satisfying conclusion to a true Canadian mystery

VM Chatham

I thought I'd include a small excerpt as well, just to whet your whistle.

This is the Preface:

Hello, let me introduce myself. I am Harriet Agnes St. George. I’m sure you’re wondering what I have to do with Tom Thomson, or indeed, with the mystery surrounding his death. I’m a painter as well and the wilds of New Ontario, that which you now know of as Algonquin Park, is one of my favourite places to indulge my passion. Being the early 1900s it is unusual for a woman to wander about unchaperoned, and in the bush at that. But let me assure you, I am no ordinary woman. I like to think I’m the forerunner of a new breed of women who will strike out and demand to be allowed to reach their full potential without the mostly unwanted advice of some male figurehead. It is only in April of this year of our Lord, 1917, that women are allowed to vote. About time too, in my opinion.

Let’s just say, it’s a good thing my dear Great Aunt Lois left me a sizable amount of money in her will, in my name and solely in my control. Much to my father’s anger and dismay. But I digress.

Tom Thomson and I used to haunt the same places and tramp the same paths and portages, sometimes alone and sometimes together. Winnie Trainor often accompanied one or both of us, most often Tom as she had a soft spot for the man. Winne wasn’t a painter, but she did love to fish and was always happy to help portage. And she did have a yen for Tom, as I have mentioned.

So, leaving you with this bit of background information, I will endeavor to tell the tale of Tom Thomson’s death and the aftermath as I know it. The subject is still a painful one for me, so as you will soon see, I have set the story down in third person rather than first. It’s a way of distancing myself from the grief and the anger at the treachery that ended Tom’s life and his career.

Chapter One- to give you a taste of Harriet's character

Harriet St. George stepped off the train at the Canoe Lake Station and smoothed down her skirts. Tipping her head back, she took a deep breath of the sharp air of early May. It was so wonderful to be free from the restraints of her rather conservative family. Here at Canoe Lake, Harriet could dispense with the cumbersome skirts and traipse through the bush clad in trousers and a flannel shirt. Not to mention the much more comfortable boots she wore while in the woods, exploring for the perfect site to set up her portable easel and paintbox. She loved the French name for her paintbox: Pochade. It rolled off the tongue so nicely. Harriet giggled and refrained from doing just that. The locals already thought she was a bit strange, well except for Winnie Trainor who also liked to gad about in trousers and spend hours fishing out on the lake.

Shaking her head, Harriet turned to collect her luggage, not much more than the aforementioned paintbox and a duffle stuffed with what she would need for a summer of painting and fishing in the Park. Hopefully, the Frasers of Mowat Lodge had received her telegram, and her room would be ready when she got there. With the paintbox in one hand and the duffle over her shoulder, she went in search of the park ranger, Mark Robinson, who kept track of all comings and goings in the Park and had promised to arrange her transport from the station to the Mowat Lodge.

The duffle was heavier than one would expect, but that weight made Harriet’s heart light. Along with the few clothes stuffed haphazardly in the bottom, most of the room was taken up with her collection of oil paints, brushes, and thin wooden shingles that she intended to use painting en plien aire. She’d copied that trick from a fellow painter she’d met last summer. Tom Thomson tended to paint quickly, but with an accuracy and feel that Harriet envied, any place he found a scene in the woods that spoke to him he captured it on the shingle boards. Only later did he transform the rough painting on the board into a canvas, usually over the winter when he returned to Toronto.

Someday, she promised herself. Someday women artists would be recognized as well as the men. She loved the vibrant new style that was developing in the Canadian art world. Slipping away from the traditional method of reproducing a scene in minute detail. The advent of photography was slowly making that form of art less popular. Thomson’s use of colour and bold strokes of paint intrigued Harriet and she vowed to attempt to hone her own skills this summer.

“Oh, Mark. There you are,” she greeted the tall, thin park ranger who stepped out of the station house.

“Miss St. George.” Mark acknowledged her with a tiny bob of his head.

“Oh, please, it’s Harriet,” she chided him. “Once I ditch these skirts you’ll be hard pressed to tell me from the locals.” Harriet gazed at the thick bush and the pale blue early May sky, the lake where the ice was just beginning to break up. “I do love this place.”

“Harriet, then, if you wish. I’m sure if your father was here he wouldn’t approve of me being so familiar.”

“Pish posh on my father. I’m free for the summer of his stuffy ideas of what is proper for a young lady.” She giggled. “I have my Great Aunt Lois to thank for this freedom. She left me a generous inheritance with strict instructions to use it as my heart desired. And I desire to spend the summer here, in Algonquin Park, painting and fishing. Watching the stars and moon shining over the lake.”

I hope you enjoy the tale. Until next month stay well, stay happy.

Fall is coming or is it here? By Nancy M Bell

 

To see more of Nancy's work please click on the image above.

September 2024 is almost half over. Do you think the calendar decides when summer is gone and fall is upon us? I honestly don't think nature pays much attention to our human machinations. I remember an August day back in 1978, I was sitting on my horse having just come out of the wooded valley behind the barn and looking over Bruno Bijoni's  huge bean field. It was only mid August, but as I sat and let the sun fall in slanted beams around me and the breeze sweep across the land to lift my hair, there was the unmistakable scent of autumn in it. It's a hard scent to describe, more experienced than described. It's a mix of dry grasses, disturbed leaf litter under the trees, a cooling of the air moving over the tasseled heads of ripe corn waiting for the reaper and so many other  nebulous but unmistakable nuances.

In my middle years, I so looked forward to the shortening of days, the cries of the wild geese overhead and the whisper of the wind in their pinions as they lofted off the trout pond. Summer was always full to the brim and the dusk of ten pm often found me still teaching a riding lesson, or schooling my own horses. Not to mention the myriad of  chores that spring and summer brings. Haying in June when the weather was always hot and humid, repairing fences, showing horses, braiding manes and tails until after midnight with my own horse always done last after the students. So yes, the shortening days were welcome. A promise of respite and a chance to recharge. 

When I was much younger, fall meant the time we spent at the cottage on Davis Lake in Haliburton was drawing to a close and that was not met with such relief. But oh, the glory of the maple trees burning orange and red and gold against the dark spruce and pine. Their colours reflected in the mirror stillness of the lake. In later years, it was the Rouge Valley that gifted me with the palette of autumn colour as I rode my horse along the well known and loved trails. Even now, so many years later, I can close my eyes and ride down Mosquito Alley, climb Spyglass Hill, look over the flats on the east side of the river from Souix Lookout, ride down the broad avenue that ran along the top of the ridge, the place where I could find  trilliums and lady's slippers in the spring.

Some falls have been open and warm, holding autumn at bay and spreading honey-gold light and heat across the western prairies. Clouds of dust rising into the Alberta blue sky heralding the work of many combines bring in John Barley Corn, wheat, canola, rye and other crops. On those days, fall seems far away and winter even more distant. There is one thing I can always be certain of though, no matter when it arrives, fall will be a'comin' in with crispy days and sharper nights. Jack Frost will paint the trees with colour, although out here in the west it mostly shades of gold and yellow. I trust my nose and my senses rather than the calendar to tell me what season it is. 

Here are some images to get you into the mood.

Until next month, stay well, stay happy.