On "Pax Americana", a speech delivered at Western University, 2 October 2025
On March 9, 2025, a few weeks after Donald Trump started speaking publicly about annexing Canada, I began a project called “Pax Americana.”
I created a series of signs meant to represent markers from an alternate future, one in which Canada had already been taken over by the United States. In this possible world, there were small pockets of resistance, but the invasion had largely gone smoothly. These signs were written from an American point of view, and were the commemorative plaques that celebrated key moments in that victory.
The subject matter was broad, and included events like the capture of members of the remaining resistance, President Ivanka Trump giving a memorable speech on top of a tank, checkpoints, propaganda, art exhibitions, parades, patriots... that sort of thing.
When Trump first started talking about erasing the border, like many Canadians, I felt shocked and betrayed that a country we considered to be our best friend could turn enemy overnight.
But this feeling that I was aligned with the national sentiment didn’t last. In my corner of the world, what I noticed was that after some initial panic and hand-wringing, many people turned their focus to commerce, concerned with:
-how they could buy Canadian,
-was anyone making Elbows Up merch,
-and was buying coffee at Tim Horton’s actually patriotic since it was owned by foreign investors?
There was much talk about how to get strawberries in the winter months since so much of our luxury produce is grown in California.
But since California was one of the “good” States, should they be punished with a boycott? Everyone knew California didn’t vote for Trump…so…would buying strawberries from them put us on the wrong side of history?
In effect, it felt like Canadians were trying shop their way out of a hostile takeover. That it was all a matter of disposable income and where it flowed. It’s the same conversation we occasionally have about hoarding our fresh water and our oil and our minerals, which, let’s be serious, are only ours if we are able to defend them. Most of the rest of the world understands these rules.
We’ve never had to learn them.
The whole thing made me wild with rage, not only because I had recently given birth and postpartum hormones are no joke, but because the whole thing felt so much more monumental to me than buying strawberries.
Through this great frustration came “Pax Americana.”
The term “Pax Americana” refers to an American-led peace — the notion of relative global stability maintained by U.S. dominance after World War II, through its military, economic, and cultural power. As Canadians, we have been incredible beneficiaries of this.
We’ve also ceded huge tracts of our cultural sovereignty in order to maintain that benefit.
We watch American shows. We follow American news. We play American sports.
Swamped for decades by American media, our sense of what it means to be Canadian or why it might be important has atrophied. For all their faults, I suspect most Americans could fill an hour discussing the ways in which being American matters to them, and how it shapes their lives.
It is hard to imagine most Canadians doing the same thing.
It’s become fashionable in the last few years for Canadian elites to kick the shit out of Canada. We have become our own favourite punchline – in our conception, we are cultureless, free of “good” history, a perpetual younger sibling to a country we resent, but are also obsessed with.
When confronted with one fairly predictable result of that lack of identity - the ease with which we could be erased - it’s only then that people responded with the most knee-jerk sort of patriotism. And that’s already fading.
It’s tiring trying to keep your elbows up for more than a couple of months at a time.
The first sign I posted from this series was in my back alleyway, which gets next to zero foot traffic. I was going to post it somewhere visible, but chickened out at the last minute. I was terrified. For those of you who aren’t familiar with my work, I am a conceptual artist, but one whose output has always been contextualized by the safety of an art gallery. Very few people tend to get upset at conceptual art these days. In contrast, making my mark on the landscape of the wider city, no matter how fleeting, felt forbidden.
Of course, there was no response to my back alley artwork, and despite a weekend spent worrying, it seems the cops had better things to do than arrest me.
But in the way of the lawless, I got bolder. I started taking my little crew – husband, baby, and dog – to more ambitious spots, posting bolder texts.
The series caught widespread notice after I posted a sign entitled “The Hot Dog Stand” on the Spadina bridge in downtown Toronto.
Someone noticed it and posted it to Reddit, asking what is was. Several online commenters thought it was pro-Trump propaganda. Others thought it was a psy-op for the Carney campaign. Others felt it was giving too many ideas to a potential invading force – as if no American had ever set foot in our country or the American military didn’t have access to Google Maps.
Others were more concerned that it was posted without a permit.
Several people have asked me what the series’ intention is. I’ll paraphrase Samuel Beckett here - if I knew, I would have put it in the series. I was not hoping for any sort of reaction or result. I’m not that much of an innocent.
To me, this is a shout into the void of Canadian identity.
Art doesn’t change the world. At most, and only very seldom, it provokes a brief reflection. But often this is only amongst a sub-strata of our class system. The people who can travel. The people who have the resources - time, in particular - to think about art.
I suspect some of you are coming up with examples right now about the museum show you went to last year on vacation, or the painter you follow on Instagram, because you love culture. And I have no doubt that you do. But I would ask - how much art by artists from this country do you own? How many strong feelings do you have about the recent culture that we’ve produced and continue to produce, and how likely is it that you are going to be asked to share those feelings out in the wild?
This kind of to and fro about the things that make us us is the lifeblood of the body politic. Instead, we’re talking about real estate and whatever is going on in the U.S. today.
I don’t mean this as a scold, but only to drive home my point that art is having an awfully hard time being the driver of cultural consciousness.
So if I don’t believe in the transformative power of art, why do I make it? I make it because I think self-expression and storytelling is a human, rather than artistic, practice.
I consider “Pax Americana” an ode to the Canadian experiment, which I believe is coming to a close. While it is definitely a forward-facing project, meant as a cautionary tale, it is also a tribute to our past, sprinkled with references to our history and achievements.
So often these days, it feels to me that we’re Austria before the Anschluss. Less willing, maybe, but just as unable to determine the outcome.
When it happens, history will be rewritten to say that we wanted this all along, and many of us probably do, if the terms were right.
I hear secondhand that our betters at Davos now talk about “when” Canada becomes part of the US, not “if.”
It seems to me that we are all under the impression that we are equal under the law, and thus have a very real say in our outcomes.
But nobody who makes these decisions is asking our opinion.
I believe that our merger with the US is happening, it’s simply going to be a matter of how violent we want it to be. Phase One was a success—Donald Trump went around saying “51st State” “51st State” a bunch of times, and we all got tied up with the wretched strawberries and the Tim Horton’s coffee and the elbows up merch and maybe if it was refundable, cancelling that trip to Disney.
Sure, some op-eds were written and your mom and dad got mad so they hung a Canadian flag from the garage. Sure, we beat the US at the Four Nations Hockey tournament, and that made us feel better because it reminded us of the Summit Series when we were on the ascent. But no one took to the streets.
I was amazed at the way Canadians seethed and are still seething for foreign wars and foreign problems, but no one left their house to respond to a clear, unmistakable threat repeatedly directed at Canada. In recent years, many Canadians have marched in solidarity to protest injustice in America.
How many Americans have marched for Canada?
This apathy is an invitation.
One takeaway from watching the war in Ukraine is that one united force can rebuff a larger invading force. Everyone in Ukraine knows the stakes, which are total.
Ukrainians are above all, Ukrainian.
Mavis Gallant once defined a Canadian as “someone with a logical reason to think he may be one” and we all nod our head because it feels accurate.
If it’s true, is that the basis for a fighting response? The basis for protest?
Our former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau proudly told the New York Times that Canada might be the “first post-national state” and that “there is no core identity, no mainstream in Canada” and we were all, like, yeah, kinda?
Imagine saying that to a Ukrainian or an American or just about any other person of any other nationality on Earth.
It only seems like enlightenment if you believe you live in a world without threats. However, if you accept that the world is a ruthless place, then it is the most unforgivable sort of naiveté.
Under those circumstances, it’s fair for the average inhabitant of this country to wonder what they would be fighting for, and whether or not it’s worth it.
Few banners have ever been raised for post-nationalism.
The works in “Pax Americana” are on some level meant to ask “How much do you care about Canada and how much are you willing to give if it comes to it?”
Everyone is free to feel and do as they please, but it seems to me that if we aren’t willing to get serious about preserving this country, that’s a conversation we ought to have now, and not once the drones start coming across the border.
Whether or not you feel comfortable defining Canada, or what it means to be Canadian, would you be sad if these questions no longer applied?
I know my answer.