In 1956 William Little, Jack Eastaugh, Leonard Gibson and Frank Braught set out to put an end to all the questions around the death of Tom, whilst in the park on a sketching trip. However, what started out as a simple quest opened the mystery of Tom’s death to even more questions!
Little and his crew exhumed skeletal remains from an unmarked grave in what was rumoured by the locals to be the real burial place of Tom. (Keep in mind it’s early 20th century and the “middle of nowhere”, so there was a lack documentation to accompany any bodies buried in the now named Mowat Cemetery). There were only two marked graves there at the time, that of eight year old Alexander Hayhurst and that of James Watson, a lumberjack who had been employed by the Gilmour Lumber Co.
Inside the unmarked grave they found the remains and a rotted pine coffin. The skull had a puncture wound on the temple. Which fuelled the theory that Tom had succumb to foul play. It also fuelled the idea that he had fallen and struck his head causing the experienced paddler to drown.
Once the party had unearthed the remains they contacted Dr. Harry Ebbs of Toronto who was vacationing at the lake at the time. Dr. Ebbs believed the bones to belong to a white man around 40 years of age. Dr. Ebbs truly believed these to be Tom’s remains. He would go on to fight with the Attorney General about their quick findings that contradicted him. It’s now 2015 and nobody has conclusively decided who those remains belong to and how they came to be on that hillside. There is also question as to what caused the skull injury.
Was it foul play? Is it really Tom? Is it Chounard a labourer of the Gilmour Lumber Co? Is it a Native Canadian from the area? Why were the remains in the area that the locals rumoured to be the burial place of Tom Thomson? Are these the remains that Winnifred looked after as stated in the song by the Tragically Hip, always going up after dark to sweep the flowers away??
