A.J. (Alfred Joseph) Casson was the youngest member of the Group of Seven, a group of artists that set out to define a “Canadian” art style by depicting landscapes with expressive novelty. October, which features Lake Kashagawigamog located north of Toronto, is an example of the rural Ontario scenes for which Casson is renowned.

October was purchased for the Edmonton Normal School as a gift from the school’s graduating class of 1931. From 1906 to 1945, Alberta Normal Schools trained elementary and secondary school teachers in the province. In 1945, the Edmonton Normal School, which operated out of Corbett Hall on campus, was absorbed by the Faculty of Education. October was one of the university’s first acquisitions of a Group of Seven work of art.

Recent scholarship has since critically reviewed the Group of Seven. Their work is seen as the perpetuation of the image and myth of Canada as an empty expanse of untouched wilderness even though Indigenous peoples continue to live on this land and have since time immemorial.