Donald Trump and Canada continued a verbal duel on Saturday over the US government’s administrative renaming of Lake Ontario, with the country erecting a giant sign saying “Lake Ontario. Now and Always” – and the American president posting a video of him tearing down an avatar of that sign, erecting a replacement saying Lake America, and dancing to YMCA.
Rhetoric over the naming of Lake Ontario is the public face of an escalating trade dispute between the US and its northern neighbor involving a 50% US tariff on Canadian steel and retaliatory tariffs from Ottawa.
Trump’s order for the US government to refer to Lake Ontario as Lake America by Sunday had at least one prominent impact. Google Maps had changed Lake Ontario’s name to Lake America for US users to reflect the president’s executive renaming order.
Canada’s prime minister Mark Carney has flat-out rejected the renaming, explaining that Lake Ontario derives from an Indigenous Wendat word meaning “the lake is beautiful, the lake is great” that dates back more than 400 years.
With talks to resolve the trade dispute stalled, Trump issued an executive order on Thursday directing US agencies that the lake was now Lake America.
It revived memories of a dispute earlier in his second presidency with Mexico, which saw Trump direct US agencies to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America.
“We’re going to be changing the name of Lake Ontario effective immediately to Lake America,” Trump told reporters before he signed an executive order renaming the body of water among US federal agencies.
In a statement explaining why it was acquiescing to Trump’s desired name for Lake Ontario, Google said its practice is to “reflect name changes in official government sources”. Trump’s order affects the US’s federal Geographic Names Information System (GNIS), “which sets the standard for official US maps”, the tech company said.
The Lake of Ontario’s name change “does not have any impact on Canadian naming conventions or how the rest of the world refers to the lake,” Google said in a statement. And it said “those in Canada will continue to see ‘Lake Ontario’” on Google Maps, “and those outside … the US and Canada will see both names.”
Google had done similarly in Trump’s executive order for the US government to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America. US Google Map users for now see that body of water named as the “Gulf of America”.
Meanwhile, on Saturday, the US president raised the volume again by resorting to the kind of AI-generated imagery for which he has shown a penchant.
He posted one such video of an army of Canada geese with Trump-like blond hair firing rifles in protection of Lake America. He published another of himself kicking over a Lake Ontario sign and replacing it with Lake America while he danced in his distinctive to a soundtrack of the Village People hit YMCA, which he has implemented into his public appearances for years.
Across the US’s northern border, Ontario premier Doug Ford replied with a two-stories high billboard declaring “Lake Ontario. Now and Always,” near Grimsby, Ontario. Ford said Trump was trying to rename the lake because Ontario and Canada were “standing up for ourselves”, and he argued the name would outlast the president.
“Long after President Trump is gone, it will still be called Lake Ontario,” Ford said in a video posted on social media.
In an interview with the Associated Press earlier, Ford said the late Ronald Reagan would be “throwing up” over Trump’s tariff policies.
Meanwhile, Manitoba’s premier, Wab Kinew, said Trump’s Lake America provocation was akin to an aging rock band trying to revive an old hit.
“You know when, like, a rock band is really over the hill and you see them like in a casino playing some song from like 50 years ago, I think that’s the part of Donald Trump’s presidency we’re at now,” Kinew said. “Like he thought he had a real hit, a real golden oldie, with the Gulf of Mexico.
“He’s trying to bring back that, and he’s trying to play the hits for his base. But I think everybody here thinks it’s a little sad, and it’s not his best work.”
Wendat Nation grand chief Pierre Picard called Trump’s move an attempt to erase Indigenous history. “I want to tell him that it is unacceptable for us, as a nation, to have a president who can eradicate our history, our culture and our identity,” Picard said.
Lake Ontario is one of North America’s five Great Lakes, alongside Superior, Michigan, Huron and Erie. At 7,340 sq miles, Lake Ontario is the smallest of those in terms of surface area.
