Trump Renames Lake Ontario 'Lake America' Amid Tariff War
Ontario Premier Doug Ford unveils defiant 'Lake Ontario Now and Always' sign as power company adopts new federal designation.
Carla Rooney
Donald Trump signed an executive order renaming Lake Ontario to Lake America for US federal purposes.
Ford unveiled a sign reading 'Lake Ontario Now and Always,' a direct challenge to the proposed name change. This defiance unfolds against an escalating tariff war between the US and Canada, which includes 50 percent levies on various goods.
Doug Ford asserts Donald Trump's name change is part of a hardline strategy on tariffs against Canadian goods, linking the renaming to broader economic pressures. Donald Trump claims his goal of fixing economic relations with Canada is comparable to stopping Iran.
we're not changing it
President Trump reportedly previously changed the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the 'Gulf of America' last year. The Associated Press was reportedly barred from White House media briefings after refusing to accept the 'Gulf of America' designation, though the ban was later overcome in court.
MapQuest pushed back against the name change, stating, 'we're not changing it' on their app. Despite this, Doug Burgum stated, 'I know that the president reached out to Apple directly, so I’m sure that we may be seeing that change coming up soon to Lake America.'
The U.S. Board on Geographic Names, part of the U.S. Geological Survey, is responsible for standardizing place names in the U.S. The process for renaming Denali, formerly Mount McKinley, took 40 years, with the state of Alaska requesting the change in 1975 and the name officially changed in 2015.
Sally Jewell, as Secretary of the Interior under President Barack Obama, declared the name change of Denali official in 2015 under a law allowing the secretary to act if the board does not. The Minnesota Supreme Court ruled that the name change of a lake to Bde Maka Ska from Lake Calhoun was done correctly after legal objections.
Widely used online maps, such as Google Maps, may display place names differently based on the viewer's location. Footage shared on social media reportedly showed thousands of Canadians shouting “Lake Ontario” at the end of a Blue Rodeo song.
Blue Rodeo was formed by Keelor and Cuddy in 1984 and has won 12 Juno Awards.