Thank you so much for this perspective. The details you provide bring it to life, and we get other fascinating info too (like the espionage concern). I very much appreciate you weighing in, because you’re right, it’s our job to keep these events alive.

For readers who aren’t familiar with the McMichael Group of Seven Guitar Project, here is the link https://canadianartjunkie.com/2017/04/04/group-of-seven-guitars/

Also, here is the link to a Globe and Mail article that carries Tony Duggan-Smith’s “Arthur Lismer” guitar https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/art-and-architecture/mcmichaels-new-exhibit-strikes-a-different-kind-ofchord/article34902195/

We also took a drive out to his former home in Bedford by kind invitation of its present day owner. I stood in the kitchen where the Lismer family had been eating breakfast when the explosion took place and the glass blown out by the immense energy from the blast. It must have been terrifying. With other painter friends of his already documenting WWI as war artists it would likely have been surreal for Arthur, being so far away from the war front in Europe and then suddenly being confronted with so much carnage and destruction. He was prevented from getting too close to the scene of the accident as there was concern over espionage and the cause of the explosion itself but there was still much damage and suffering for him to record in his sketches that lay outside the restricted harbour.

It is a fascinating period in Canada’s history and it is our job to keep these events alive in peoples imagination. It was certainly one of Canada’s great tragedies and these painting help remind and educate us of those dire events.