WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said on Thursday he was renaming Lake Ontario as “Lake America” amid growing tensions between Canada and the United States.
He signed an executive order directing the Interior Department to update the lake’s name in the US geographic naming service. Trump cannot force Canada to follow his preferred naming convention, however.
Trump has been floating the idea of the name change in recent days as the US announced it was imposing 50 percent tariffs on $20 billion worth of Canadian goods over the weekend after talks between the countries broke down.
Trump has been needling America’s northern neighbor since he returned to the White House last year, suggesting the ally with whom the US once had warm relations should instead be absorbed as the 51st state.
Trump, who signed the order as he was sitting at the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office, had a large sign behind him propped on a stand with a map of the Great Lakes. Over Lake Ontario, in big red letters, the map read “Lake America.”
On the other side of the president was another map with the words, “MAKING THE GREAT LAKES EVEN GREATER.”
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney rejected the move, invoking the lake’s Indigenous roots and noting that the name predates both Canadian Confederation and the US Declaration of Independence.
“Canadians also know that naming reality means calling it Lake Ontario — then, now and always,” he wrote.
Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston dismissed Trump’s move in a social media post, writing: “We’re into some real foolishness now. It’s Lake Ontario, buddy.”
The lake is one of multiple Great Lakes that the US and Canada share borders along. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat whose state shares a border on the lake, wrote on X in response to the White House’s announcement that, “New York won’t be calling it that.”
There is no single international body that determines names of international bodies of water and Trump has wide latitude over how the US government recognizes geographic places and landmarks.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford, who has traded insults with Trump, this week brushed aside the prospect of Trump changing the lake’s name as “a lot of rhetoric.”
The name Lake Ontario comes from the Huron Indigenous people’s word “oniatarí:io,” which means “lake of shining waters.” The province of Ontario, founded in 1867, took its name from the lake.
Trump said that while his action was not meant to send any particular geopolitical message, “Canada’s been ripping us off for a long time” on trade and military issues.
“They wanted to be treated like a state and they’re not a state,” the president said. “We just can’t do that anymore.”
“We love the people of Canada,” Trump added. “I don’t think their representatives do, an appropriate job. Maybe they’ll change. I really don’t know. It doesn’t make much difference.”
The move is reminiscent of his move last year to rename the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America.”
Source: Saudi Gazette