Arthur Heming (1870-1940)

By John Adcock

Arthur Heming was a contemporary of Sir Charles G. D. Roberts and Ernest Thompson Seton, the originators of the realistic Canadian wildlife story. He was born Arthur Henry Howard Heming in Paris, Ontario on 17 January 1870. He studied art at the Hamilton Art School, the New York Art Student’s League and under illustrator Frank Brangwyn in London, England. He was author and illustrator of Spirit Lake (1907), The Drama of the Forests (1921), and The Living Forest (1921), and an associate of the Group of Seven. He worked as an illustrator for Harper’s Magazine and the Canadian Magazine. He died at Hamilton, Ontario on 31 October 1940.

His love of art and nature was inherited from his parents. “My mother sympathised with my earliest efforts. She encouraged me always with love and understanding. Father took an interest in my love of nature till I took to running away from school to the woods.”

Heming illustrated two wildlife books by William Alexander Fraser, “The Canadian Kipling,” Mooswa and others of the Boundaries (1900), and The Outcasts (1901).

The Boston Herald praised Mooswa and others of the Boundaries

“Takes its place at once beside the Jungle Book. A group of stories capitally told, of the lives and doings of the animals.

The Chicago Tribune said of The Outcasts

“It has the freedom and mystery of that great unknown country up towards the Arctic circle, and the fascination of animal existence.”

W. A. Fraser was born at River John, Pictou County, Nova Scotia, in 1859. He was educated in New York and Boston and spent seven years prospecting oil in India and a further six years prospecting in the Canadian Northwest. He began his literary career as a journalist on the Detroit Free Press. Fraser wrote numerous short stories and novels about India, the Canadian wilderness, and horse-racing. He died at Toronto 9 Nov 1933.