Ron Thom Architect

Charles Edward “Ned” Pratt — an Olympic bronze medallist and principal at the Vancouver architecture firm Sharp and Thompson, Berwick, Pratt — famously separated architects into two categories: “neck-up” and “neck-down.” Neck-up architects, writes Adele Weder, were “practical men … who managed the day-to-day logistics” and worried about plumbing and mechanicals. Neck-downers were “like artists, who felt their way around the design process and relied on gut feelings.” 

Ronald J. Thom (1923–86), the subject of Weder’s book Ron Thom Architect, was so much about heart, gut, and groin that he could have been the neck-down poster boy. 

Through Weder’s detailed research and vivid writing, readers all but smell the ponderosa pines of Penticton, B.C., where the Scotland-born James Thom and his Ontario-born wife Elena — the fourth woman called to the bar in that province — welcome little Ronald into the world, before moving to Vancouver and watching as he almost becomes a concert pianist (but was “a little violent” on the keys), only to find his footing as a visual artist at the Vancouver School of Art. At the VSA, he met instructor Bertram Charles Binning, a semi-abstract artist who would build one of Canada’s first International Style/Modernist houses in 1941. 

Joining the Royal Canadian Air Force at nineteen, Ron Thom switched from “social” drinker to “soused,” writes Weder, and married his first wife, Christine Millard. After missing out on combat action, Thom returned to graduate from the VSA. His first child on the way, and in need of a regular paycheque, the young artist was introduced to architect Ned Pratt by his former instructor Binning. In short order Pratt was listing Thom as “design lead” on projects (despite his having no formal architectural training), and by 1950 Thom had designed the entirety of the much-lauded D.H. Copp house, which laid bare his love of American architect Frank Lloyd Wright. 

Around this same time, Thom had his first extramarital affair. Major triumphs, such as the B.C. Electric Building or his many house commissions, were counterbalanced by the “domestic battles” with Christine, and by 1961 the couple, now with four children, had divorced. Thom didn’t have time to contemplate his darker side, however, as he was awarded his first Toronto job, the one that would become his masterpiece: the University of Toronto’s monastic, mysterious, and achingly beautiful Massey College.