Grave of artist Mary Riter Hamilton to finally have a marker
By David Nicholson
As the steamer Campana sliced through the choppy waves of Lake Superior in
July of 1889, the rugged hillside town of Port Arthur, Ontario loomed in the distance.
On board, newlyweds Charles and Mary Hamilton likely pondered how their life
together would unfold here. They were not newcomers, as they had already
established the Paris Dry Goods House on Cumberland St. within the previous year
and were returning from their wedding in Clinton, Ontario.
Unfortunately, their time in Port Arthur would be brief. After three years of
marriage they lost a child in infancy and then Charles died at age 30 in 1893, which
was a devastating loss for Mary. She decided to leave Port Arthur to pursue a career
as an artist but she never forgot the place.
She developed her painting skills in Canada and travelled to Europe for
numerous exhibits in the early 20th century. By 1911 she had returned to Canada
and in 1919 embarked on her most ambitious project.
She was commissioned by the War Amputation Club of British Columbia to
document the battlefields of the Great War and spent many years in France and
Belgium living in a tin hut, all the while watching out for looters and unexploded
munitions, which almost put an end to her quest on numerous occasions. As her
finances dwindled she relied on the generosity of area farmers for food. Consider
that at the time, Mary was over 50 years old (and 50 was considered old in the
1920s) and she was living an adventure perhaps more suitable for someone half her
age.
She created almost 300 pieces of art between 1919 and 1922, with only
about 227 surviving. She decided not to sell any, instead donating her work to the
National Archives for the veterans and people of Canada. This experience was
physically draining and she never painted with the same vigour or passion again. She
died in Vancouver in 1954, and was interred in an unmarked grave next to her
husband in Riverside Cemetery in Port Arthur.
As part of her estate, she bequeathed a 1906 painting to the city of Port
Arthur called ‘Maternity’ in memory of her child and husband, which immediately
caused a controversy and was put into storage for almost 40 years.
What made it controversial? By today’s standards, nothing. However, a
painting of a mother nursing a baby was not a common public sight in 1954. The
painting was declared “unsuitable for public display” and it wasn’t until the early
1990s when the painting was placed on prominent public display on the third floor of
Thunder Bay City Hall.
The quality of her work has been compared to the Group of Seven, however
she never achieved the same status, perhaps because some early critics felt her
work glorified war, or that she never sold some of her finest works.
From 2004 to 2011 I conducted historical walking tours of Riverside Cemetery
and in the summer of 2007, Fred and Donna Johnson took the tour. Fred had
admired Mary’s work for many years and was surprised there was no marker on her
grave. After some initial conversations we felt it was important to work on having a
small marker placed on the Hamilton plot so Mary’s artistic contribution and her
generous donation of her battlefield art to the National Archives of Canada would be
honoured with a public monument. Fred began investigating some local funding
options while I worked on the process of getting permission from Riverside to place a
marker on the plot. Through the fall of 2007, initial responses to funding requests
from some organizations were negative, which was frustrating, although they were
eager to tell us where to go…to investigate other funding options.
Historically, a few headstones have been placed on local graves by
organizations. A local German-Canadian Association erected markers in Riverside in
the 1950s for the German prisoners-of-war that died in local camps during the
Second World War and the Thunder Bay and District Labour Council erected markers
for the union supporters Viljo Rosvall & Janne Vuotilainen in Riverside in 1993 (they
had been unmarked since 1930) and for union representative Harry Bryan in Stanley
Hill Cemetery in 1947.
We also had to establish a marker design and decide what words would
actually appear on it so we could get an accurate cost estimate. Fred and I met with
Lakehead Monument and it was decided that we would duplicate the style of the First
World War military markers that had recently been restored in Mountain View
Cemetery, as that was the time period of her most famous artwork.
By early 2008, there was interest from many generous individuals, the
Thunder Bay Branch of the Ontario Genealogical Society and the Kakabeka Falls
Branch of the Royal Canadian Legion, which meant that the marker on the Hamilton
plot would become a reality. The marker was be placed on the plot by late spring
2008 and a dedication ceremony was held that summer.
Mary Riter Hamilton (1867 – 1954) was born in Teeswater, Ontario and was the
daughter of John Riter and Charity Zimmerman. Charles Watson Hamilton (18631893) was born in Cincinatti, Ohio and was the son of Alexander Hamilton and May
Warnock.