An audit of the Archives of Ontario has discovered that hundreds of valuable documents and items, including four prints by artist A.J. Casson, have gone missing.
The archives preserve and store records, the art collection of the provincial government and other donated private materials.
The art collection was appraised at more than $400 million in 2005. According to Ontario's auditor general, Jim McCarter, Casson's four prints, as well as several hundred valuable photographs, letters, documents and artifacts, primarily from the 17th and 18th centuries, are missing.
The missing Casson works include:
- First Snow
- March Day
- Farm House
- Forest Edge
McCarter said in his report, released this week, that some items might never be recovered because "the losses were likely the result of thefts during the 1970s."
The report criticized the archives' inventory-control practices. It said items are not catalogued and the number of pieces listed in each container is often an estimation. Containers are not sealed when being transported or while in storage.
McCarter said his staff found 600 pieces of art, valued at more than $1 million, in a basement that was not suitable for storage.
The Casson prints, depicting scenes of rural Ontario, were bought for $210 each back in 1983. While they are not considered valuable in the monetary sense, they are part of Casson's oeuvre and are deemed important.
It's not known whether the Casson works have been stolen or are simply untraceable. They were listed in 2003 as "unlocated."
"We're still trying to locate all these things," Greg Dennis, spokesperson for Consumer Service Minister Ted McMeekin, told the Globe and Mail newspaper.
Dennis said government officials believe the Casson works disappeared in the 1980s from the archives, located in a building in downtown Toronto, close to the provincial legislature.
Casson, while not a member of the original Group of Seven painters, was invited to join the group in 1926. He became known for his watercolours of small Ontario towns such as Alton and Elora.
The Toronto-born artist died in 1992.
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