Woodstock Collegiate Institute - Oracle Yearbook (Woodstock, Ontario Canada)

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WEST WIND Tom Thomson KCOURTESY ART GALLERY OF TORONTOl Canadian Art True Canadian art was first begun by Tom Thomson. In his brief and dramatic car- eer he first painted the north country in its true colours. ln March he would leave for the north and not return until November: most of his sketching was done in Algon- quin Park. He never attended a school of art, but his pictures have brilliant colour, powerful rhythm and are full of the mood of the north country. ln 1917 he was assured a brilliant career, but it was never realized. One summer morning his canoe was found upturned in Canoe Lake, Algonquin Park. Several days later his body was found, and death was attributed to accidental drowning: but several things remain unexplained: a deep gash across the head, the lungs still filled with air, and the fact that Thomson was THE ORACLE a superb canoeist. Canada had lost her fin- est landscape artist, who died just when he had reached his prime. Thomson was only forty, but he left a lasting imprint on Can- adian art. The famed Group of Seven was organized in his memory. These lines by a fellow artist, I. E. H. MacDonald, inscribed upon a small mem- orial on the shores of Canoe Lake, eloquently sum up Thomson's life: To the memory of Tom Thompson, artist-woodsman and guide who was drowned in Canoe Lake, luly 8th, who lived humbly and passionately the wild. It made him brother to all l9l7, with untamed things in nature. It drew him apart and revealed itself wonderfully to him. lt sent him out from the woods only to show these revelations through his arty and it took him to itself at last. Twenty-Three

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Book Reviews Bright Paths To Adventure The days of romance and adventure are by no means past. Here is a real book for those of you who yearn for the thrilling days of the Spanish Main. The book should be of special interest to Canadians as it was written by Gordon Sinclair who spent his boyhood in Toronto and still makes it his home unless he is wandering through for- bidden Tibet. Although some of them sound like tall tales, Mr. Sinclair, who has travelled the world over, states that all of his stories are true first-hand-accounts of incidents that actually happened. Bright Paths to Adventure is not one continuous story, but a collection of thirty- one exciting chapters. The author tells of in- teresting incidents concerning wild animals, of the hypnotic and supernatural powers of the Voodoo Men of India, of the only man who ever saw a mountain born, of lost con- tinents, of buried treasure, of a one-armed general who has just begun making his sixth million dollars, as well as of gripping adventures in which our own Canadian Mounties figure. If you read Bright Paths to Adventure you can travel around the world, seeing all these strange things and manfy more, while seated beside a cosy fireplace. I am sure that you will find here three-hundred pages of fascinating adventure that you will want to read again and again. Don Hart llB Short Leash By Bertrand Shurtleff Following A.W.O.L., his popular book of 1944, Bertrand Shurtleff has written a new dog story about two great army dogs in the South Pacific. . Spareribs and Huskie, with their trainers Lieutenant Sedaewick, Sergeant Trueman, and Corporal Nilson, are sent to the Pacific fighting zone. Spareribs, aptly named, al- though scrawny, is an exceedingly wiry messenger dog. Huskie, a contrast to Spare' ribs, is a magnificent specimen of the breed Twenty-Four which gives him his name. He is trained to accompany patrols and warn them of strang- ers in the vicinity by a bird-dog point. When a plane carrying two highly im- portant officers crashed in the Owen Stanley Mountains, Lieutenant Sedgewick requests that he, Truemari, and the dogs be allowed to hunt for the missing officers. On the slim chance that the officers may be alive, the request is granted: then they, along with a native guide Orani, are parachuted into a valley near the scene of the crash. The party is in a precarious position as the jungle is infested with savage natives, Iapanese, and disease-carrying insects. Food and medi- cal supplies run short. When the rescuers are surrounded by the enemy, it seems as if nothing short of a miracle can accomplish their rescue. As Mr. Shurtleff makes the reader feel all the menace of the situation, anyone who craves adventure will find it in SHORT LEASH. Donna Dawson, 12A Brother, Here's A Man! Brother, Here's a Man! written by Kim Beattie and published in 1940, recounts the exploits of loseph Boyle in company with Frank Slavin, the Australian prize fighter, during the Klondike Gold Rush, and later of Mr. Boyle by himself through the Russian Revolution, as well as his association with Queen Marie of Rumania. To live such an eventful life as Ioseph Boyle's, a man re- quired, on one side, herculean physical strength and audacity undreamt of before, and on the other side, honesty, gentleness, and absolute frankness with everyone. Boyle had all these qualities. Mr. Beattie's interesting and authentic account involved a substantial amount of work on his part. To obtain the material, he spent much time and travelled widely: his references to The l:'irs , a well known estate on the edge of Woodstock, which was the former Boyle family home, is of local interest. Colonel Ioseph Boyle is portrayed as a figure more at home in the midst of fighting than in a fireside chair-as a truly great man, whose courage made his adversaries quail. THE ORACLE