Ontario Premier Installs “Lake Ontario” Sign in Defiance to Trump

Ontario Premier Doug Ford has hit back at US President Donald Trump by installing a large sign on Canada’s shoreline declaring: “Lake Ontario. Now and Always.”

The move follows Trump’s executive order seeking to rename the lake “Lake America,” alongside a series of AI-generated videos he shared mocking Canada’s continued use of the original name.

“Long before President Trump, this lake was called Lake Ontario. Long after President Trump is gone, it will still be called Lake Ontario,” Ford said, standing in front of the newly installed sign.

“Just in case President Trump or anyone else forgets, we’ve set up this sign to remind them, it’s Lake Ontario, now and forever,” he added, echoing an earlier statement from Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, who insisted that “things must be called by their name, and this lake is called Lake Ontario – today and forever.”

Ford said Trump’s decision to rename the lake stemmed from the fact that he “didn’t like Ontario and Canada standing up for ourselves.”

Dispute Follows Collapse Of US-Canada Trade Talks

The war of words follows the collapse of trade talks between the two countries, with the US imposing new 50% tariffs on $20 billion (C$28 billion) of Canadian goods.

Canada has said it will introduce “dollar for dollar” counter-tariffs the following month, deepening a standoff that has spilled from trade policy into a fight over geographic naming.

Trump’s executive order, which he said takes effect immediately, gives the US Department of the Interior 30 days to update the lake’s name in the Geographic Names Information System (GNIS), the official US repository for domestic geographic names.

While the US president has broad discretion over how the US government recognises geographic landmarks, other countries are not required to adopt the new name.

Google Maps Splits The Name By User Location

Google says it has changed the lake’s name on its maps for users in the United States, explaining in a blog post: “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.”

The approach mirrors how Google previously handled the Gulf of Mexico, which now appears as the Gulf of America for US-based users following Trump’s 2025 declaration on that body of water, a renaming Mexico has similarly rejected, arguing that a single country cannot unilaterally rename a shared international waterway.

On Saturday, Trump posted several AI-generated videos on social media escalating the dispute. One shows him kicking over a Lake Ontario sign and replacing it with one reading “Welcome to Lake America.”

Another depicts Canada geese with Trump’s trademark hairstyle carrying rifles while patrolling the shoreline of the newly renamed lake.

Canadian officials have firmly rejected the renaming effort.

Lake Ontario, the smallest of the five Great Lakes, borders the Canadian province of Ontario and the US state of New York. Four of the five Great Lakes — Ontario, Huron, Michigan and Erie — take their names from Indigenous words.

In contrast, Lake Superior’s name comes from an anglicised French term, a history Canadian officials have pointed to in defending the lake’s traditional name.