A public art installation paying homage to one of Canada’s most famous historical painters, created by one of Canada’s best-known contemporary artists, burned down last week in Toronto in what police investigators believe was an arson attack.
Douglas Coupland’s bright-red Tom Thomson’s Canoe (2008), an homage to the Group of Seven artist Tom Thomson, who died in a canoeing accident at age 39 in 1917, was destroyed in the early hours of 2 April.
According to a Toronto police report posted on social media: “At approximately 2:42 a.m., officers responded to a fire at Canoe Landing Park near Fort York Boulevard and Dan Leckie Way. The iconic red canoe was found engulfed in flames and, unfortunately, was destroyed.”
In an accompanying video, a police spokesperson said the department is treating the fire as a suspected arson attack. “That area is surrounded by high-rises and condos,” the spokesperson said, “so we are asking anyone that has any information, including footage from security cameras or if you saw or heard anythingto please contact @tps14div at 416-808-1400.”
Coupland tells The Art Newspaper: “At the moment, we know it was arson, but we don’t know its motive. Art is always a lightning rod. Was it political? Who’s to say.”
He added that another of his public art projects is displayed nearby, and was not targeted: “Very close by, there’s my Monument to the War of 1812, which I did in 2008. An English soldier standing above a toppled US soldier. Maybe that’s next?”
Still, the artist says he has been touched by the outpouring of public support and is optimistic his Canoe will be re-created. “People have been very thoughtful to me since the canoe got torched,” he says. “We’re sure it will be rebuilt, but maybe out of steel.” (Photos from the scene show only the sculpture's steel frame, with the majority of its resin body completely incinerated by the fire.)
Coupland, a Vancouver-based conceptual artist and author—who, among numerous other achievements, helped popularise the term “Generation X” with his 1991 novel of the same name—works across a range of media from paintings, text art and monumental sculptures to technology and installation.
Canoe Landing Park, a privately funded urban park in downtown Toronto, was built on former railway lands in the historic Fort York area and opened in 2009. It was designed by the Vancouver-based landscape architects PFS Studio in collaboration with the Toronto-based firm the Planning Partnership of Toronto, the public art consultant Karen Mills and Coupland. In addition to Tom Thomson’s Canoe—which which was large enough for people to stand in and a popular setting for selfies and looking out over the Gardiner Expressway to Lake Ontario—the neighbourhood’s public art installations include a colourful display of large fishing bobbers and a sculptural beaver dam.
According to the Toronto Downtown West Business Improvement Association website, Coupland’s now-destroyed installation was a civic landmark.
“Viewed by millions of motorists travelling the Gardiner Expressway and walking in and around Canoe Landing Park, Douglas Coupland’s startling red canoe serves as a symbolic entrance marker to the heart of downtown Toronto,” the site reads. “Constructed as part of a comprehensive program of artwork for the park, this canoe is perched over the edge of a landscaped berm that was built using excavated materials from the construction of Concord CityPlace.”
