What's Up Huntsville Lake of Bays July 2011 - Whatsupmuskoka.com

WHAT’S UP MUSKOKA
JULY ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT
P057020CN 11/05
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Art exhibit explores life of Tom Thomson’s lover
By Karen Wehrstein
A musician and an artist from
Huntsville have teamed up to create an
exhibition exploring the life and identity
of Winnifred Trainor, the lover of Group
of Seven artist Tom Thomson.
Imagining Winnie by Beverley Hawksley
and Sarah Spring will be on display
at the Art Space Gallery in Huntsville
from Aug. 5-28. The exhibit will include
about 10 paintings by Hawksley, along
with 3-D “atmospheric installations”
and some text she plans to write, Hawksley
says. They will be accompanied by
recorded music composed especially for
the show by classical pianist Sarah Spring
and played by Spring on piano and
Amanda Penner on violin.
Hawksley was inspired last fall after
reading Roy McGregor’s book Northern
Light, which delves into the mysteries
surrounding Thomson, including an
exploration of his relationship with
Trainor. She remained single and became
a recluse, living in Huntsville into her
80s, apparently never able to get over his
early death.
“I was just completely inspired by his
writing,” says Hawksley. “I started to
visualize who she might have been. I
really wondered what kind of a person
would be interested in a focused and
obsessed artist . . . What sort of a young
woman would be drawn to a man like
that? Clearly she wasn’t a shrinking violet;
she had to have had some gumption,
or he wouldn’t have been attracted to
her. She was her own person long before
any connection with him, and yet her
story seems lost.”
Sarah Spring and Beverley Hawksley have joined forces to explore the life and identity of Winnie Trainor, the lover
of Group of Seven artist Tom Thomson. Imagining Winnie will be on display at the Art Space from Aug. 5-28.
Hawksley’s paintings are mostly portraits,
depicting Trainor metaphorically
through a contemporary model.
“I thought, ‘What would you say to
me, Winnie, if you were a contemporary
woman with this story?’ That is how I
have depicted her; these are contemporary
images, with an emotional feel of
what it might have been like to be her.
It’s more my imagining of a woman who
was a little girl with hopes and dreams in
the early 1900s. Any young girl in that
era would have found it difficult to find
her voice.”
Spring has a connection with Canoe
Lake, where Thomson died, through
multi-generational camping experiences
there. Her family rented a late-19th century
cottage there throughout her childhood.
“There is definitely a feeling of magic
and sacredness on the lake,” she says.
“When Beverley asked me if I’d do
the music,” Spring says, “I wanted to see
the paintings. I was so inspired I just
came home and those paintings and my
experience of Canoe Lake and what I
think of the Tom Thomson myth all
came together, and it all came out that
night.”
She composed the piece entitled
Imagining Winnie, and is still working
on subsequent pop-cum-classical pieces
for the five-track production. When
Spring first played the music for her,
Hawksley was moved to tears.
The show will kick off with a reception
on the evening of Aug. 5, at which
Spring will perform live.
Photograph:Kelly Holinshead
Muskoka author releases new novel
By Dawn Huddlestone
Perseverance has paid off for local
author Liam Dwyer. On the heels of his
successful Murdoch in Muskoka series
of six books, the first novel the 88-yearold
writer ever completed, Of the Faithful
Departed, was published in April.
“When I retired at 62, I was cajoled
into doing something other than annoying
my wife,” laughs Dwyer. “She
prompted me to write and so I wrote
this 650-page book. The idea for it was
rattling around in my brain over the
years. My uncle was a parish priest in
Madawaska and I modeled the principal
character after him.”
Of the Faithful Departed tells the
story of Father William O’Brien, a rural
Ontario priest who is murdered in a
dangerous Vatican plot. He leaves
behind a box entrusted to his friend Dr.
James Maloney, which contains a
revolver and a journal with startling revelations.
“I thought it was a magnificent piece
of work. My daughters-in-law were the
only ones who agreed to read it,” he
says. “They were very polite and said it
was good. I sent a one-page synopsis to
65 publication houses and got 65 rejections.
That kills your enthusiasm.”
The manuscript was shelved but
Dwyer later hired a professional editor
to critique it. She advised him to remove
250 pages and better develop the characters.
“I didn’t know anything about fiction
writing,” says Dwyer. “I had
written policies and procedures for
manufacturing, but that’s all.”
He rewrote the manuscript five
times and Largo Literary Productions,
a small publishing company in
Bracebridge, decided to publish it
this past spring. It is available at
Scott’s of Muskoka in Bracebridge
and is also being sold in two Toronto
bookstores.
Now that his novel is in print and
the Murdoch in Muskoka books marketed
to networks as a possible television
series, Dwyer has no current
plans to resurrect the characters. He
does, however, have another book in
mind.
“I have one in my head and have
started writing the prologue. I have an
idea what I want to do but we’ll see if
anyone wants to publish it,” he says.
“I’m now 88 years old. I’m on borrowed
time. If there’s any accomplishments
you want to complete you’d
better do it or else. And the or else is
pretty definite.”
26 July 2011 www.whatsupmuskoka.com