A friend of mine (Mor? Was it you? I think so, but I can’t remember. Anyway… hi!) recently told me about a fascinating Canadian art installation, and once I looked further into it, I knew I had to blog about it. It ticks a lot of boxes for me. Art? Check. Writing a fictional narrative? Check. Providing bone-chilling political commentary? Abso-effing-lutely! Mixing all that with a delightful sense of irony? Insert my wry smirk here.
Dara Vandor is a Canadian Visual Artist with an eclectic catalogue of work. Her pen drawings are lifelike, her conceptual art reveals an extremely creative mind, and the work really makes you think. What she produces is cerebral and startling. It makes you re-evaluate reality and truth and privacy and intimacy and the things that reveal who you truly are.
Pax Americana was inspired by Donald Trump’s aggressive and flippant threats to make Canada the 51st state through economic force, that began in early 2025. Needless to say, most Canadians are not amused by this concept, as the headlines I compiled, with the help of ChatGPT, indicate below. But just as a thought experiment, what if it did happen?
Through the use of aluminum signs, Vandor created an imaginary world in which Canada was involved in future conflict and occupation. She sets this in the 2030’s, and her story began in Toronto. President Ivanka Trump, atop a tank, with a bullhorn, urges Canadians to surrender. Of course, Canadians fight back for years, and many of them are sent to a penal colony called Qaanaaq for their troubles.
These aluminum signs are meant to be like our roadside historical signs, something along the lines of, “Washington slept here.” (“Where the hell didn’t the man sleep?” says everyone on the Northeast Coast of the US.) Vandor placed them in various locations throughout downtown Toronto, to mark significant sites related to her narrative.
For example, this sign commemorates a sniper’s nest near the CN Tower that the US Army used during Operation McKinley, the campaign to liberate the northern territory. It proclaims that “these marksmen were the quiet vanguard of Patriot resolve,” and that “this plaque is a tribute to the enduring spirit of our American defenders, watching over freedom from above.”
It kind of makes the hair on the back of your neck stand straight up, doesn’t it? It should. Canada is in a vulnerable position, and could easily be invaded by a Fascist America if Trump decided that he might find that entertaining.
Canada has already seen subtle changes in the here and now. For example, changes to the Library of Congress have an impact on catalogue systems elsewhere, including in Canada. Case in point: Anything about the “Gulf of Mexico” must now be filed as “Gulf of America,” and personally, the idea that the whim of one arrogant man in the throes of dementia can force such changes on others makes me sick to my stomach.
These signs also remind us that commemorative plaques are written by those who control the narrative. Clearly, the victors in this story wrote these plaques, and you can imagine their storyline being taught in all the schools. That’s how the twisting of history becomes ingrained.
While the narrative makes the reader uncomfortable, it also makes them consider their own nation’s agency. She also put signs in Tofino, BC, Ottawa, and Montreal. Sadly, but not unexpectedly, the signs disappeared quickly.
But fear not. A new exhibit that expands the narrative is now at the D.B. Weldon Library at Western University in London, Ontario.
Elements of the narrative include such things as:
- ”RFK’s “brain pyramid” which would “rank fields of study according to their national utility.”
- A company called 51st Productions, which puts out such things as a children’s show entitled, You’re Not Everything You Could Be and You Know It, and Mel Gibson’s Anne of Green Gables: Resurrection. There’s even a Ryan Reynolds rock musical called Project Homecoming, in which he plays an ICE agent who goes around reminding illegals that everyone belongs somewhere—just not here.
- A short-lived Bachelor of Reading degree in which the student has to read 10 books from an approved reading list. The degree was discontinued as it failed to lead to gainful employment, as no one needs to read anymore.
- A Repository for Canadian Culture that included an assortment of hockey erotica and a selection of institutional apology statements.
- A Faculty of Corrections, which filters out the inane portions of books and makes necessary corrections to falsehoods leftover from the previous regime.
- A declaration by 3rd term President Ivanka Trump that, due to a history of trade imbalances with the former Canada, reparations should be made by sending natural resources southward for processing, and that “fulfillment of the obligation would be judged by ‘a general sense of satisfaction and the evolving needs of the nation,’ to be assessed at a later date.”
- An Archive of Networked Culture that maintained materials that evoked a disproportionate public response within networked culture. All materials sorted by trigger, response, virality and platform.
Her website also includes a description of several books that were part of the exhibit as well, including:
- Great Art: Restoring American Values to American Culture, A book that demonstrates that great art is in service to war, and reinforces the glory of a great nation.
- The Log Driver’s Waltz: Clearcutting a Northern Passage, which is self-explanatory.
- The Limits of Expression: A Guide to Ideas, Form, and Identity, which is a handbook that tells you what can be said or created.
- A Male Perspective on Women’s Voices, which is mansplaining at its very finest.
- Pulling the Plug: The Collapse of Socialized Healthcare and the End of Canadian Exceptionalism, which is a book about the one thing that Americans used to envy about Canada (supposedly): their healthcare, so now there’s nothing to envy anymore (supposedly).
Sadly, the exhibit in the library will come to an end on April 30th, but the signs and the books can be viewed, and replicas of the signs can even be purchased on the artist’s website. I think that this exhibition should exist, somewhere or other in Canada, for as long as Trump lives. Because you never really know to what lengths this man will go, so people need to take his flippant remarks seriously.
If anyone should be issuing apologies, it should be we Americans for having unleashed this kraken upon the world.
Additional Sources:
Fake historic plaques in Toronto depict ‘alternate reality’ where U.S. annexes Canada
What would change if Canada became the 51st state? Just look what’s happening at Western University
Leave a Reply