Pax Americana
A Guide to the Exhibit at D.B. Weldon Library
Pax Americana is an art series that reimagines Canada as a site of future conflict and occupation. Through a collection of plaques and books, fragments of the story of how Canada was absorbed by the United States are revealed, as well as what became of us afterward.
The series began in March, 2025, after President Donald Trump’s repeated threats to make Canada the 51st state. Since then, plaques have been posted in Toronto, Ottawa, Tofino, London and Montreal. The twenty plaques installed throughout this building, along with the sixteen books in the lobby vitrines, were created specifically for the D.B. Weldon Library. The series is ongoing.
The selection of Weldon for this exhibit reflects the central role that libraries play in university life. On opening in 1972, Weldon established a campus heart and eventually helped form the University’s first quad and central campus hub. Weldon was intentionally designed as a place for community: a space to gather, access information, exchange ideas, and create new knowledge. Today, the spaces where we gather, the information we can access, and the ideas we are free to share are all under threat in a world where sovereignty is increasingly challenged.
This exhibit was made possible through contributions from Western's Program in International Relations, Western Libraries, the History Department, the Student Donation Fund, and the Association of International Relations (AIR).
View the plaques here.
Leave your thoughts here.
Books:
When we were planning this show, I was given the use of four vitrines in the main lobby of the Weldon Library. I knew immediately I had to make fake books. So much of what I love about this series is its unexpectedness – areas that seem quotidian are made strange, if only for an instant. I want viewers to stumble on these books and think – wait, what am I looking at here?
Yeah No, No Yeah: Understanding the Linguistic Anachronisms of the 51st State
A theme in this series is my attempt to identify the things that differentiate us from Americans. Language is an obvious one. When I visit my American friends, both sides are endlessly fascinated by the things that are unique to our respective vocabularies. Pop vs. soda. About/aboot. “No yeah” and “yeah no” are real identifiers of modern Canadian speech, which Canadians implicitly understand the meaning of, and as far as I know, no other English speakers use. I was also playing with “out for a rip” and “shit disturber” as alternate titles, but I liked the palindromic nature of “no yeah/yeah no.” The imagined author of this text is my mother-in-law, Margaret Kelly, who is a voracious reader. The little joke here is that she is Irish — her speech free of any Canadianisms.
Aug 27, 2035
-Though it looks specific, much of the dating in this series is intentionally fuzzy. The one constant is Unification Day — August 27, 2035. I tried to use this as the nucleus of the series, and worked forward and backwards from it. It’s my husband’s birthday. I left this book without any subtitles, quotes or explanatory information on the cover, because in this alternate world, everyone would know exactly what those dates signified — in the same way that “9/11” is clearly understood.
The Capture of Banting and Best
This riffs on one of my favourite plaques from the series, the one where I think I really hit my stride. “Banting” and “Best” are the codenames of two of the small handful of rebels who actually resisted the invasion. It doesn’t end well for them. The fictional author, Edward Clark Noble, was a member of the University of Toronto insulin team, who missed his shot at glory when Charles Best was chosen as Frederick Banting's assistant instead of him during the summer of 1921. A little Easter egg.
Great Art: Restoring American Values to American Culture
The painting on the front is of General Patton. I wanted to suggest that in this alternate future, great art is art in service to war, art that reinforces the glory of the nation rather than the individual. It contrasts with the soft landscape used to typify Canadian art, used on the “Views from My Tent” book.
Views from My Tent: A Complete Survey of Canadian Art from 1867-2035
This title is a bit of an inside joke — after dragging my husband to a million showings of Canadian art, he commented that much of the genre is just endless iterations of landscape — views from a tent. Most Canadians have had the Group of Seven rammed down their throats at every opportunity as an example (maybe the only example?) of our “national art.” I think this tendency towards landscape still continues in contemporary Canadian art — that’s what sells, that’s what people want to hang above the couch. We’re not a very adventurous bunch when it comes to art.
The image here is Tom Thomson’s “Morning Cloud.” The imagined author is John Murray, a nod to the excellent Joan Murray, an art historian who has authored several texts on Thomson and the Group. One of the themes of this series is how women and their accomplishments are erased and minimized — the masculinization of Joan’s name is one such example.
The Log Driver's Waltz: Clearcutting a Northern Passage
Another sacred Canadianism is our love of the outdoors and the mythologizing we do around our supposedly excellent environmental stewardship. I wanted to poke at that. Seeing our forests clear-cut would be the ultimate stake in the heart of Canadian identity. The author is Philippe Tatartcheff, a collaborator on the original “Log Driver’s Waltz,” made famous by the NFB.
The Limits of Expression: A Guide to Ideas, Form, and Identity
Many of the texts in “Pax Americana” are meant to make the viewer feel uncomfortable. A handbook outlining what can be said/created feels a bit hyperbolic at first, but we see this currently trending on both sides of the border. Who gets to speak? What are they allowed to say? Who gets to judge what can be said? The hysteria around cancel culture made a deep impression on me. Words have become dangerous — even in our supposed free-speech democracy. You can lose your job, your friends, your family if you express the “wrong” ideas. A dark path.
A Male Perspective on Women's Voices
A male artist once casually described his work to me in these exact words. I have always had a terrible memory for quotes, but this stuck with me. It’s deliciously ludicrous. This book is meant to be a big mansplaining text about art made by women.
The Call of the Wild
The sticker that says “NOW SET IN AMERICA” — in the same way books get tagged with those “NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE” badges — is doing all the heavy lifting here. The book “The Call of the Wild” remains the same. Originally set in the Yukon, it has been recontextualized in this alternate reality, now that the Arctic has been taken over by America. I am interested in these reframed narratives, and how texts can become different things to different readers.
Anne of Green Gables: Resurrection
Like “The Capture of Banting and Best”, this book is a riff off of a previous plaque I made. The original text was about a fictional production studio that produced government-endorsed films and tv shows. The titles were meant to be humorous — Jordan B. Peterson’s award-winning children’s program You’re Not Everything You Could Be, and You Know It; Mike Myers’ Oscar-nominated Elbows Up, Fam, as well as two others that I re-used for the show at Weldon: Mel Gibson’s movie Anne of Green Gables: Resurrection; and Ryan Reynolds’ rock musical Project Homecoming.
Anne pops up again in the Weldon plaque “Faculty of Corrections,” which mentions that the book has been reworked so that Anne is no longer a Canadian girl, but a New Englander. I don’t want to give the impression that I am a massive Anne fan, but I do think it’s a touchstone of our culture.
The author of this book is Edwin Simpson, one of Lucy Maud Montgomery’s suitors. The two were engaged before LMM got the ick and broke it off — here Edwin is cast as the ex-boyfriend coming back to haunt poor Lucy and her legacy.
Sunshine Sketches of a Little American Town
Another Canadian classic, ripped from the Canadian canon and inserted into an American context. The painting is “The Birthplace of Herbert Hoover” by Grant Wood — about as American a painting as you can get, overlaid on top of a Canadian story.
Pulling the Plug: The Collapse of Socialized Healthcare and the End of Canadian Exceptionalism
Ask any Canadian what differentiates them from Americans and one of the first thing that they mention is healthcare. Whenever the topic of union with the US is raised, gun control and healthcare are the main concerns people cite. We’re very smug about our healthcare, such as it is. The title of this book suggests that were it not for our medical system, there’s nothing special about us whatsoever. Ouch.
The author, Goldwin Smith, was a big advocate for Canada’s union with the US — the perfect guy to be gloating about the end of the Canadian experiment.
This Does Not Represent Our Values: Selected Canadian Apologies
There is nothing more Canadian than an apology. We apologize when we aren’t wrong. We apologize for being in spaces. We apologize before we ask questions. Apologizing is who we are, from the micro to the macro level. We also seem to accept any manner of sin if it is accompanied by an apology. A collection of apologies is emblematic of our culture right now, which is obsessed with apologizing up and down for just about everything — present, past and probably future.
Securing Our Future: How the Greatest Nation on Earth Took Control of the Great Lakes
Water sovereignty is taken for granted by Canadians. After Trump’s initial threats on our nation, I found myself in a Reddit thread suggesting that we were going to be ok because we had several treaties in place that protected the Great Lakes. I can’t think of anything more naive. What history has taught us is that what America wants, it will take. The rest of the world understands that something is only yours if you can protect it. We haven’t had to learn that lesson.
The author credit is a reference to the Rush Bagot treaty, which was drawn up between the United States and Great Britain, limiting naval armaments on the Great Lakes following the War of 1812. “Rush Bagot” felt a little too literal, and a little too Rush Limbaugh to me, so I went with the longer name “Rushton,” which translates to “town where the rushes grow”— a nice watery name.
Lives of the Presidents
Students of history will note that all the presidents are listed correctly here, but there are three “Trump” terms at the end. I was thinking dynastically — in my series, I have imagined Ivanka Trump taking the reins of power from her dad. This chronology suggests that maybe it’s Barron or maybe a Trump brother after her, that the family is unable to let go of the reins of power. Or maybe that’s the actual will of the electorate.
The foreword to the book is by J.D. Vance, who has given everything — integrity, identity — to the Trumpian cause, but who I suspect will be shut out of the halls of power.
Dear Life
This is the only book cover in this show that I didn’t make. Alice Munro is a perfect example of someone who has lost her footing in the Canadian pantheon. Can we consume art by people we don’t approve of? This book also relates to the nearby plaque “Reconsideration of a Reconsideration,” which similarly looks at cancel culture and how approval changes through time. Perhaps the next regime will see her work through different eyes. Or not.