The Jack Pine Site

The Jack Pine Site is the lakeshore destination of the Jack Pine Trail, a 1.6-km round-trip walk from Achray Campground to a rocky Canadian Shield outcrop above Grand Lake. It is stop 6 on the Achray Historic Site Exhibit and is marked as the place that inspired Tom Thomson’s The Jack Pine. Make the walk if the painting’s story interests you; the original tree is gone, so this is a real shoreline with a connection to the painting, not a replica of its scene.

From the rocks, Grand Lake opens out past boulders and scattered pines to forested hills across the water. Carcajou Bay’s distinctive hills are part of the view. For a photo, keep some rock and living pines in the foreground; that shows the changed shoreline better than aiming only across the lake.

Tom Thomson worked as a fire ranger based at the Out-Side-In cabin in Achray in summer 1916; the cabin still stands at the campground. The Jack Pine is dated 1916–17. The lone jack pine associated with the painting was found long dead in 1970, and new growth has filled the gap. The marked Achray site is an inspiration point, but Little Cauchon Lake has also been proposed as the sketch’s exact location, so treat the connection as meaningful without assuming the painting was made from this precise spot.