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US President Trump announced on Thursday the renaming of the smallest Great Lake, Lake Ontario, to Lake America in an escalating trade feud with Canada. The order affects only the US Geographic Names Information System and has no impact on Canadian naming conventions. Google Maps stated it will display Lake America for US users while Canadian users continue to see Lake Ontario, and others see both names. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney rejected the change, while Democratic New York Governor Kathy Hochul and Republican Vermont Governor Phil Scott also opposed the decision. Ontario Premier Doug Ford unveiled a lakeside sign reaffirming the original name. The dispute is part of a broader trade conflict involving a 50% US tariff on Canadian steel and retaliatory tariffs from Ottawa.
Trump announced on Thursday that he was changing the name of the smallest of the five Great Lakes, part of an escalating trade feud withThe US president’s order affects the US Geographic Names Information System , which sets the standards for official US maps.
It does not have any impact on Canadian naming conventions or how the rest of the world refers to the lake.
“Since we update Google Maps to reflect name changes in official government sources, which is GNIS for the US, people using Maps in the US will see ‘Lake America,’ those in Canada will continue to see ‘Lake Ontario,’ and those outside of the US and Canada will see both names,” Google said in a blog post issued on Saturday. António Guterres: ‘Superpowers need to understand things have changed’ The White House, Canadian prime minister Mark Carney’s office and Ontario premier Doug Ford’s office did not immediately comment on Google’s decision.
Google Maps made a similar change to the Gulf of Mexico last year, labelling it the “Gulf of America” following Trump’s executive order on his first day in office renaming the body of water. Carney immediately rejected the lake’s name change on Thursday.
Democratic governor Kathy Hochul of New York, which shares a long border with Canada, declared that “New York won’t be calling it that,” while Phil Scott, the Republican governor of neighbouring Vermont, called Trump’s decision “petty and disappointing” on social media. A sign for Lake Ontario at the Fifty Point Conservation Area in Grimsby.
Photograph: Keito Newman/The Canadian Press via AP In Ontario, Ford on Saturday unveiled a large lakeside sign that reads, “Lake Ontario: Now and Always,” in both English and French. Rhetoric over the naming of Lake Ontario is the public face of an escalating trade dispute between the US and its northern neighbour involving a 50% US tariff on Canadian steel and retaliatory tariffs from Ottawa.
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 way to a soundtrack of the Village People hit YMCA, which he has incorporated into his public appearances for years. Ontario’s premier, Doug 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. He appeared on Sunday on the ABC News programme This Week and remarked that Trump’s Lake Ontario renaming order was like “something out of Saturday Night Live,’” the famous NBC sketch comedy show.
“No one’s going to call it Lake of America,” Ford said. “It’s been Lake Ontario for hundreds of years. It’s going to continue being Lake Ontario. ” 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 ageing 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. “I don’t want Canadian anything. They’ve been ripping us off for decades, and it’s going to stop,” Trump also wrote, referring to the ongoing US-Canada trade war.
– Guardian and ReutersA wickedly inventive political ad is airing in Texas as midterm elections loomA Wicklow woman in Marbella: ‘I would make friends in the summer and they would then go home. But I found my tribe’Van Morrison at Electric Picnic: Not quite an old snuggly blanket, but when he’s this good he’s wonderful
Trump Lake Ontario Lake America US-Canada Trade Dispute Great Lakes Google Maps Tariffs Geographic Naming
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