| Tom Thomson's paintings are frequently reproduced as icons of Canadian nationalism. His best known works, such as "A Northern River," "The Jack Pine," and "The West Wind," have been reproduced in such various forms as postage stamps, coins, coasters and posters. They are by now thoroughly layered over in generations of nationalist gloss. But Thomson himself is a legendary figure in Canadian culture. A mythology of Tom Thomson was produced by members of the nationalist intelligentsia just after his tragic death in 1917. This idea played upon many existing ideas of Canadian national identity, including the notion of Canada's wild and northern essence. The inter-war period was a particular fecund moment in Canadian nationalism. This exuberant nationalism underlay much of the Thomson mythology.;However, this mythology was also informed by sentiments of antimodernism. As much as the Thomson mythology presented a figure celebrating the development of Canadian art and the Canadian nation, it expressed a certain anxiety about the various and dynamic conditions of modernity. Antimodernists yearned for the simple life and a more meaningful existence, and many of them thought they saw this in the figure of Tom Thomson. At a time when men's roles and attributes were being redefined, some of the cultural producers represented Thomson as an exemplar of true manhood. Those who created the Thomson legend, then, looked backwards to a supposedly simpler time as much as they welcomed and fostered Canada's commercial, industrial, and political development. Fundamentally, however, they created an idea of Tom Thomson that supported, rather than challenged, many of the existing hierarchies and structures of Canadian society. |
