Trump Renames Lake Ontario as 'Lake America', Angering Canada
US President Donald Trump has once again angered a neighbouring country by unilaterally renaming a geographical area. This time, Canada is furious after Trump renamed Lake Ontario as Lake America.
Lake Ontario lies on the border between the US and Canada. Trump ordered the lake’s name to be changed to Lake America. His order came as he escalated the trade war with Canada.
Trump’s order to rename the lake recalls the US President’s unilateral action in renaming the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America in January 2025. That move also drew strong rejection from the Mexican government.
As reported by AFP on Friday (28/8), Trump stepped up his provocation against Ottawa by signing an executive order on Thursday (27/8) changing the name of the lake located on the border between the two neighbouring countries in North America.
“We are going to change the name of Lake Ontario to Lake America, effective immediately,” Trump told reporters as he signed the executive order at the White House.
The temperamental US leader’s move came after US-Canada trade negotiations failed to reach an agreement last week. That prompted the two long-time allies to impose retaliatory tariffs on each other.
When asked by an AFP journalist why he was targeting an ally for sanctions rather than America’s enemies, Trump replied: “Canadian officials have treated us very badly. They are not nice people.”
Behind Trump’s desk in the Oval Office, there were two maps, one of which displayed a map labelled ‘Lake America’ in red ink over the location of Lake Ontario. The other map bore the title “Making Great Lakes Even Greater”.
Canadian PM firmly rejects Trump’s move
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney firmly rejected Trump’s move. Carney stressed that the lake would continue to be called Lake Ontario “now, then, and forever”.
“We know that America is changing. Their trade relations, their foreign policy, their national monuments, even the names of their bodies of water,” PM Carney said in a statement via social media platform X.
“Canadians also know that the reality of naming means calling it Lake Ontario – now, then, and forever,” he stressed.
Lake Ontario is the smallest of the five Great Lakes in terms of surface area. The five Great Lakes stretch across the border between the US and Canada. Lake Ontario itself borders the Province of Ontario in Canada and the state of New York in the US.
In his statement, PM Carney explained that the lake’s name has existed for 400 years, long before the formation of the US and Canada. He touched on the origin of the lake’s name, which comes from the word of the indigenous people or local community, meaning “the lake is beautiful, the lake is great”.