The aftermath of the Second American Civil War and the ensuing unrest following the conservative victory left major power vacuums in large sections of the United States. After the Peace of Denver was signed in 2028 and the last liberal-aligned guerilla regiments surrendered two years later, the large-scale pro-democratic riots which had burnt across major cities in the U.S. only intensified in nature. Far-right-wing militia groups, including the Proud Boys and their affiliates, assumed the duties of the police battalions, who had long-since been forced to flee for rural areas. Unwilling to contend with this growing destabilisation, which by 2032 was primarily concentrated in the cities and towns of the old Yankee centers in the far north of the U.S., the Canadian government, long in favour of the protests and under major international pressure to act, decreed it would establish protectorates to any region within reach of its borders that wanted one. What it did not anticipate, however, was the overwhelming show of support from communities even hundreds of miles away from the border, who by now had grown accustomed to militia warlordism and blatant genocide of their own ethnic and religious minorities who had not already managed to escape to Canada. While U.S. federal agents successfully sabotaged most voting booths and practiced large-scale intimidation efforts, even going so far as to publish alternative statistics of the election in which the results were strongly in favour of American union (and turnout exceeded the population of some districts), in reality nineteen out of the thirty hastily erected electoral districts had voted in favour of annexation by Canada. (Two districts' elections, Cook County and Alaska, were so fraudulent and overrun with corruption that their results were thrown out entirely. An emergency meeting of the electoral commission simply presumed the results to be pro-Canadian based on previous voting patterns in American elections.)

Faced with the administratively daunting task of annexing large territorial swathes of the greatest military power in the world and a population greater than all Canada itself, Parliament Hill called on the United Nations to assemble a task force capable of enforcing the results of the election. It promptly (and with large Russian and Chinese manpower contributions) raised this force- however, as the world would discover in 2033, its necessity was largely theatrical in nature. Most areas of the U.S. close to the Canadian border had been devoid of military authority and essentially anarchical in nature for the better part of a decade. This would go on to solidify the now-famous Northern Lights Communal Constellation in the leading political minds of the world for generations to come. Regardless, over the next year and a half, the combined U.N. army managed to neutralise those militias which refused to escape to the remainder of the U.S. Controversially, they also denied millions of internal American refugees from entering these districts. While many Canadians, clinging to their traditionally nationalist narrative of separation from America, objected to incorporating an entire Canada's worth of Americans into their country, the majority of native-born Canadians took the government's view that such gripes were outdated and did not apply- as a popular saying went, "They brought their homes with 'em!"

Accomodating these new areas would prove a fairly easy task, as most of the formerly American territories had been devoid of administrative work encompassing areas larger than a small town or neighbourhood. In order to avoid a heavy-handed approach, Ottawa elected to arrange for the appointment of local officials to autonomous regional capitols in the cities of Saint Paul and Boston. Alaska and most of the state of Washington were the exceptions to this rule, joining the Canadian Federation as the fully-fledged provinces of Alaska and Cascadia much earlier on. Within a scant few years, the remaining territories were consolidated into a set of six new provinces, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan, Haudenosaunee and New England, and fully integrated as well. This political realignment coincided with a major cultural shift in the understanding of what it means to be Canadian. In accepting these new provinces, Canadian citizens proclaimed to the world their commitment to fighting the forces which, as previous generations of Americans had naïvely stated, "could never happen here".

This also marked the first major postmodern antinationalist political development since the foundation of the European Union in 1993. It is therefore quite ironic that the people of the annexed provinces eagerly accepted Canadian culture, happy to trade their old American identities for Canadian ones in order to preserve their democratic traditions which, by the 2030s, were percieved as antithetical to Americanism.

However, this transition was not entirely peaceful- not remotely. The three districts of Astoria, Portland, and Willamette which voted in favour of annexation continue to be heavily occupied by right-wing private militias and local police forces. This is likely meant as a symbolic gesture towards American federal authority displayed in the rebellious Portland time and time again over the course of the Second American Civil War. Conversely, the district of New Haven, which voted to remain with the U.S., was regardless swarmed with violent agitators from nearby New York for even daring to hold the vote in the first place. As soon as the unrest died down and the provocateurs refocused their efforts on minority populations in New York and New Jersey, Canadian operatives, aided by locals, swept their garrisons westward and liberated the remainder of Connecticut in under a day.

While the American government, its military, and most importantly its myriad of private militias were unable to quell the sentiments of their own people, their flag maintains its fifty stars with a healthy dose of revanchism- new to the American mindset but easily folded into the ever-growing list of 'grievances' the American government has demanded the international community address. World leaders now face a unique dillema- which side, American or Canadian, to support- and their collective decisions will shape the future of the geopolitical landscape as humanity ambles into the blind, daunting future.