Algonquin Elegy

The mystery of Canada’s artist Tom Thomson’s drowning in Algonquin Park’s Canoe Lake in 1917 have never before been so thoroughly investigated, documented and reported to the public. Here is what Tom Thomson experts have to say about the book: ‘Neil J. Lehto’s Algonquin Elegy: Tom Thomson’s Last Spring, is both a labor of love and a labor of gargantuan effort to come to some understanding, nine decades on, of exactly what happened that summer of 1917. Perhaps no one has ever worked as hard to know the unknowable and, in doing so, he has contributed invaluably to the greatest story in all of Canadian art. Neil’s passion for Tom Thomson shines through as passionately on each page as Thomson’s passion for Algonquin Park shines though on each painting he left behind that last Spring.“ -Roy MacGregor, Columnist for the Globe & Mail, writer of a novel based on the mystery of painter Tom Thomson’s final days, Canoe Lake

‘Neil Lehto’s ambitious novel refers to Ontario’s huge provincial park, Algonquin Park and to the death under mysterious circumstances, of one of Canada’s greatest artists, Tom Thomson (1877-1917). Lehto intertwines his story with fact so that it has the tone of a memoir but he exuberantly adorns his account, painting in gaps with invented scenarios and developing bare-bones motifs into well-designed adventures. The result has rich color and offers a welcome respite from the dryness of art history.“ -Joan Murray, Executive Director and CEO, McMichael Canadian Art Collection, Kleinburg, Ontario.