15 HAMILTON, Bermuda -- One of the acid homilies of our time is that it is not enough to do well, others must do poorly. Tom Butterfield and his grand passion are proof that a friend's triumph is a far finer thing.

Within months, and for only the second time, the most concrete manifestation of Butterfield's singular success is expected to leave this tiny island in the Atlantic and travel to Canada. Final negotiations are underway with the University of Toronto Art Centre to display the impressive result of a quixotic, 13-year personal obsession to find and collect evidence of Bermuda's influence on Canadian, American and European artists.

Last April and May, 50 of the collection's more than 700 pieces went on the road for the first time. Titled Bermuda: Two Centuries of Inspiration, the show wowed audiences in New York and Philadelphia, earned critical acclaim and puffed up more than a few chests at home.

Art Centre curator Liz Wylie expects the exhibit to be just as attractive to Canadians. In addition to adding a splash of tropical colour to dreary winter, it will provide a short and accessible course in 200 years of art history.

"It is really kind of neat that all these artists went there and were influenced by Bermuda,'' Wylie says. "Hunting down and collecting their work is simply a great idea.'' It doesn't hurt, of course, that Bermuda, and now the Masterworks Foundation Collection, is marked by the brushstrokes of the great. Recovering from a nervous breakdown, Georgia O'Keefe visited the island in the spring of 1933 and produced some strikingly untypical pencil, charcoal and graphite sketches of the island's often bizarre plants.

The impressive list of those who worked on the island stretches from the watercolours of Winslow Homer, a turn-of-the-century American giant, past the cubism of Charles Demuth to the evocative work of Andrew Wyeth who painted at least three important pictures in Bermuda in the '50s.

Significant, and dominant, as those Americans are, Butterfield most often credits Canadian painter James Morice with capturing Bermuda's artistic appeal. Morice advised his fellow painters to escape the cold and dull light of the northern winter to "cleanse their palate'' with southern seascapes, hibiscus and oleander.

Bermuda's strong Canadian connection was publicly recognised in 1991 when the government, following the Masterworks lead, recognised the contribution of foreign artists by issuing a set of four postage stamps of their work. Sharing the honour with Americans Prosper Senat and Ogden Pliessner, were the watercolours of New Brunswick's Frank Allison and Toronto's Jack Bush.

Not surprisingly, the plan of Butterfield and Masterworks' gifted curator Elise Outerbridge, is to modify the US travelling exhibit to give more prominence to Canadian artists. That makes marketing sense, but it is also personally important to Butterfield.

Along with many Bermudians, Butterfield came to Canada in the '60s to be educated. After cutting a sometimes rowdy swath through high school, he was trained as a print maker at Ryerson, earned a Canada Council grant and eventually went home to dip into the wine business.

Despite deep Bermuda roots - his family is one of the Island's oldest - Butterfield's flamboyant character, coupled with a laugh that wouldn't be out of place in a Disney cartoon, spawned more skepticism than enthusiasm when he founded a charity and began fundraising to repatriate Bermuda's art. As Butterfield candidly admits, few on the island of 65,000 shared his passion to explain Bermuda through the eyes of painters.

What they missed then, but seem to understand now, is that Masterworks is more than an art collection, more than just a visual smorgasbord promoting the island's sea, sand and unique architecture. As Bermuda writer Patricia Calnan puts it: "There seems to be little doubt that the entire concept of collecting Bermudiana has brought a degree of self-knowledge for an island which, perhaps for the first time in its history, is consciously seeking a sense of national identity.'' One of Butterfield's many expectations for the Canadian exhibition, planned for either November or March, is that it will begin to change the way some people now think of Bermuda. Like many islanders, Butterfield is deeply disturbed by the bungled trials of two men charged with the 1996 murder of 17-year old Belleville student Rebecca Middleton. He hopes the show will remind Canadians of Bermuda's more typical bucolic nature and in some way soften the ugliness of a terrible event.

What is more certain is that the Masterworks Collection will reinforce the notion that one person, held hostage by a magnificent obsession, can still change the world in small but significant ways. That obsession has given Bermuda a remarkable collection, programmes for young and budding local artists and funding to attract painters and photographers to the island. These are fine things and they rest handsomely on Butterfield's shoulders.

Honeymoon memories: Canadian artist Jack Bush honeymooned on Bermuda in 1934 with his bride Mabel, but it wasn't until 1939 that he finally put brush to paper to create `House and Figure, St. George's'. The Bush watercolour is perhaps one of the best known of the Masterworks Collection.