Apologies for the bloggus interruptus. I've been on a mini-holiday in the Laurentians, but my reviews from the Blyth festival have been appearing in the paper in my absence: Innocence Lost: A Play About Steven Truscott and Courting Johanna, which is based on an Alice Munro short story.

Those are three-star and two-star reviews, but I've developed a new-found love for Blyth, a festival truly connected to the community in which it is based. (If you go, I highly recommend going one of the country suppers at the Trinity Anglican Church Hall. Hearty meals and good company; reminded me that I should chat with audience members more often.)

Meanwhile back in the lean, mean city, Toronto's Summerworks festival is on and here are my picks.

And, to round out the shameless self-linking, I liked the Shaw Festival's production of Githa Sowerby's The Stepmother so much that I thought I should write a piece in praise of the festival's "archeological theatre" for The Guardian.

Now, on the subject of touting our artistic accomplishments abroad, I am baffled and infuriated by the news that the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade has axed its $9-million Trade Routes and $4.7-million PromArt program, both of which help send artists abroad.

Here's why: When I moved to England a couple years ago, a friend of mine who was returning from a few years there told me to prepare myself for a shock. "Canada is never mentioned," she told me. "You never hear anything about it. It's completely off the map."

Well, she was right, and she was wrong. Sure enough, Canada came up in the news only on very rare occasions, usually when there was a quirky story like a whole bunch of feet washing up on the coast of BC.

As an example of how Canada is often viewed, take the reaction I got from my boss's boss when I resigned to move back to Toronto and take up this here post. "You're leaving to go back to Canada?" he said. "But it's barely in the G8!" (Before you get too aghast, it was a joke. Kinda.)

And yet, and yet - while Canada rarely made the international news pages in the UK, I came across Canadians in the pages of the major newspapers on a daily basis. Where? In the arts section.

In London, I was working mainly on a music website, so this struck me most in terms of our musicians. If Neil Young or Feist or even Holy Fuck passed through London, they got reviewed. There were reverent articles about Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen from the older generation and Arcade Fire and Crystal Castles from the younger. The appeal of Nelly Furtado was analysed at length. Rufus Wainwright was adored - much more so than he is here. NME put out a special Canadian issue with a CD of music stuck to its cover. My site did a special podcast on Canadian music - and it was my editor's idea, not mine.

All this made me - and I know this is very unCanadian - proud of where I came from.

Our artists are our ambassadors abroad. Without them, on the international stage, Canada exists as a bus beheading and a video of Omar Khadr. Is that what we want?

I'll throw over to my colleague Simon Houpt who wrote very eloquently about this today:

"It's hard to overstate how low a profile Canada has abroad. If that's the way the government wants it, that's their decision. But if we want our voice to have influence in the rest of the world, to be the moral beacon we believe it is, that requires marketing Brand Canada. Sending artists and writers abroad is an integral part of that marketing that happens to be extremely cost-effective."