Focus on Drowned Land and discuss the Background.
In 1912 after Thomson's initial experience of visiting Algonquin Park, he and his colleague William Broadhead went on a two-month expedition up the Spanish River and into Mississagi Forest Reserve (today Mississagi Provincial Park). Representative of typical Canadian attitudes towards the environment at that time, an article in the Owen Sound Sun reporting on Thomson's visit to the forest reserve wrote that "technology gave value to the landscape" and placed emphasis on the mineral, forest, water-power, and fish and game resources rather than on any scenic beauty the land possessed.Thomson's transition from commercial art towards his original style of painting began to be apparent around this time. Much of his artwork from this trip, mainly oil sketches and photographs, has been lost due to two canoe spills experienced during the trip, the first spill being on Green Lake in a rain squall and the second in a series of rapids. In a letter to his friend M. J. (John) McRuer, Thomson wrote:We started in at Bisco and took a long trip on the lakes around there going up the Spanish River and over into the Mississauga [Mississagi] water we got a great many good snapshots of game—mostly moose and some sketches, but we had a dump in the forty-mile rapids which is near the end of our trip and lost most of our stuff—we only saved 2 rolls of film out of about 14 dozen. Outside of that we had a peach of a time as the Mississauga is considered the finest canoe trip in the world...  The weather has been very rotton  [sic] all through our trip never dry for more than 24 hours at a time and sometimes raining for a week steady...
Mississagi Spanish River Algonquin Park oil sketch Mississagi Provincial Park oil Owen Sound squall