By Leah McLaren | Illustration by Paul Johnson

As a native Torontonian who has spent the better part of the past decade living in London, England, I get two questions on visits home: 1) Isn’t it expensive there? And 2) What do they think of us?

The answer to the first is, it isn’t too bad if you factor in cheap booze and avoid taking taxis. As for what the British think of us, the answer is, they don’t.

Of our many collective insecurities, the enduring Canadian obsession with how other cultures view us is by far the most cringingly parochial and self-defeating. And, as they like to say in London, it really gets on my tits. We’re like the anxious party guests sweating silently in the corner. Our palpable desperation to be liked precludes the very thing we want most, which is serious attention and respect from places more populated and historied than our own.

You can understand, then, the extreme trepidation with which I approached Painting Canada: Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven, an exhibit at the Dulwich Picture Gallery in South London. Yes, I was glad the Group of Seven had finally commanded a large-scale show in a major European gallery—and it is, without question, the group’s most important international exhibition to date. At the same time, I was determined not to be reduced to a state of slathering patriotic gratitude by the mere fact of its existence.

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