Night Mayor

Winnipeg, 1939. A Bosnian immigrant to Canada, Nihad Ademi, conceives of a way to harness the power of the Aurora Borealis in order to broadcast imagery of his vast and beloved adopted land from coast to coast to coast. From his tenement apartment-cum-laboratory, with the help of his large and eager family, Nihad perfects his device and prepares to bring Canada – or at least images of Canada, from the fighting beaver on – to its own people. From directly in the centre of the country, a startling broadcast emanates like ripples in a formerly placid pond.

Incredibly, due to the unfathomable powers of the Northern Lights, the device begins projecting images that do not even exist – images plumbed first from the depths of Nihad Ademi’s subconscious mind, and presently from the group consciousness of the whole citizenry of Canada.

However, all of this does not rest easy with the government. They stage a raid on Nihad’s laboratory in an effort to prevent the dissemination of unregulated patriotic imagery. The climactic donnybrook between cops and family leads to the tragic suspension of this remarkable method of broadcast, and relegates Nihad Ademi to the footnotes of Canadian history.