To Lawren Harris art was almost a mission. He believed that a country which ignored the arts left no record of itself worth preserving.

Not knowing all of the conventions of beauty, he [Tom Thomson] found it all beautiful

Artists are often excellent businessmen. They have to be. Otherwise they do not remain artists.

It's probably hard for anyone looking at my landscapes today to realize that I was once regarded as a rebel, a dangerous influence; that I've been told I was on the verge of insanity, that my painting was nothing but meaningless daubs. Lawren Harris, the man most responsible for drawing the Group of Seven together, was accused of something perilously close to treason – his paintings, said his severest critics, were discouraging immigration.

There were dozens of lakes, many of them not on the map. For identification purposes we gave them names. The bright sparkling lakes we named after people we admired... to the swampy ones, all messed up with moose tracks, we gave the names of the critics who disparaged us.

What to paint was a problem for the war artist... the old heroics, the death and glory stuff, were gone forever... the impressionistic technique I had developed was now ineffective, for visual impressions were not enough.

Those who follow are always behind.

We broke from old tradition. I am an objective painter, I should like to go abstract, but I don't know how.