Ernest Thompson Seton had an extraordinary influence on the world during his lifetime. Here are highlights. Detailed consideration for each section will be found elsewhere on this site. 1 Consciousness Raising about Wild Animals At the turn of the 20th century a...
Is an artist born naturally gifted with a talent for painting or is it a matter of nurture, or some of each? While we probably can’t know the answer to that for sure, Seton’s first formal painting is extraordinary. Hiking through the Don River Valley, in the woods...
There is a wonderful passage in Two Little Savages (and yes, we can only wish that he had chosen a different title) where the adult Seton reflects on what the boy Seton was thinking in the 1870s (referring to himself as “Yan.”). He spent increasing amounts of time,...
The boy “Squinty” Seton had to put up with a good deal of bullying in the economically poor neighborhood of Toronto in which he found himself. After the disappointing results of the Ontario farming venture, Joseph Thompson brought his family back to city life. The...
An interesting thing happened on the way to 1745 in Scotland. The Highland clans of MacDonalds, Macleans, Stewarts and Camerons decide the time was right for a restoration of the royal Stuart dynasty. (The founder, James I, in 1604, suggested that smoking caused lung...
In my work as an historian, I am generally more interested in finding meanings than in establishing dates. (“In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue.” Maybe so, but that tells us nothing about the implications of that action). Nonetheless, setting out an array of...
