‘You can be anything you want to be in this world,’ said artist Hook

Family, friends and the Sault and area arts community are mourning the loss of Doug Hook.

The well-known watercolour artist died Thursday at Sault Area Hospital.

He was 77.

A living artistic legend in our area, Hook marked his 47th annual art show in Richards Landing in 2019. 

“Many people in the region have his paintings,” said Hook’s son Colin, speaking to SooToday Saturday.

Famous people outside our region also had Doug Hook paintings.

Very famous people, in fact.

“Of note, he gave a painting to Pierre Trudeau when he was in power. The interesting thing a lot of people don’t know about this story is that when he gave the painting to Pierre, it was of a toy sailboat floating in the water, and what most people don’t know is he told Pierre the painting was for his sons. So, he actually gave our current Prime Minister a painting when he was just a child,” Colin said.

“I don’t know whether Justin has it.”

Hook’s work also caught the admiring eye of royalty after he did a painting of a minesweeper upon which Prince Charles served when he was a Royal Navy officer.

“He did that painting for him, and went to England and held court with Prince Charles and gave him the painting. He has a painting in the Royal Collection.”

“He said it wasn’t as great as the separate occasion when he met Princess Diana,” Colin chuckled.

“He found her extremely charming.”

“Prince Charles found my father quite fascinating. When my Dad was preparing to come back to Canada, he got a call from the palace saying Prince Charles would like to have tea with him. My father was upset with his decision (to take the flight back to Canada and skip tea with the heir to the throne). He missed that opportunity. I said ‘Dad, don’t you think maybe the Prince of Wales could’ve arranged you a better flight?’”

Born in Toronto in 1943, Hook started painting at the age of six (when he received his first set of watercolour paints, Colin said).

As a young person, he spent his summers in Muskoka, where he developed his love for painting and the northern landscape.

In the early 1970s, he settled at Sailors Encampment on St. Joseph Island, inspired to paint for a living by John Keast (another well-known Northern Ontario artist).

Hook was known for paintings of the northern landscape and wildlife, as well as buildings (such as churches) and countless boats and ships which passed by his St. Joseph Island home.   

Hook also donated to charity over the years, having done work with Ducks Unlimited Canada, donating paintings and prints of his work to various causes. 

“He’s quite legendary. He was a legendary story teller,” Colin said.

“Anyone who met him, after the introduction, would have heard one of his many hilarious stories. He was very warm and kind.”

Hook also had some experience, in his later years,  appearing as an extra on TV shows (Trailer Park Boys) and in films (one of which starred Christopher Plummer).

“In that one, my Dad was to play a hospital patient in the same room as Christopher Plummer, and he was supposed to be laying there, looking quite sick. As my dad was laying there, he fell asleep. He woke up to tremendous applause. The whole cast was applauding Christopher Plummer for this riveting scene he had just done on camera.”

“My dad was so upset that he missed seeing such a sensational scene, that he had fallen asleep,” Colin recalled with a laugh.

“He was quite a character. He had a tremendous number of friends. He had this uncanny ability to remember people (and details of their lives, years later).”

Hook found the beauty of the Canadian landscape to be “awesome,” Colin said.

“He said, from St. Joseph Island, he could get in a two-hour drive in any direction, the greatest variety of landscapes for his paintings. We would go boating but we didn't go fishing, we would be looking for the perfect landscape picture, we would take cameras and take pictures.”

Dedicated to doing his background work for his paintings, Colin recalled a time in which his father stayed outside with his camera for hours waiting for foxes to come out in the open for him to photograph.

“For every painting he painted, there were hundreds of photographs taken.”

As Hook’s career progressed, his work took on a high degree of almost photographic realism.

So much, in fact, he started to step back from the high detail so that his work became more expressive to viewers, Colin said.

“There’s nothing but good memories. He never retired. He never stopped painting.”

One memory of Doug Hook stands out especially clear in Colin’s mind.

A friend once told Hook of how parents directed that person’s desire away from being an artist into the need to get ‘a real job.’

“My dad slammed his fist on the table and said ‘that’s not true, that’s not true! You can do anything you want to do. You can be anything you want to be in this world. If you want to be an artist, go for it!’”

“That is the one message, I would say, he would have for anyone thinking about any sort of field in the arts or chasing their dream, is to ‘go for it.’ You can make your way doing what you love, and that’s what he did, and I’m tremendously proud of him for having done that and been such a success.”

Doug Hook is survived by his wife Moya Morrow, son Colin, daughter-in-law Alisha and one grandson, predeceased by his son Graham.

A celebration of Hook’s life is postponed until a group of his friends (which Colin said number "in the hundreds") can gather post-COVID.