Ontario Premier Doug Ford has erected a billboard-sized sign on the shore of Lake Ontario reading “Lake Ontario. Now and Always,” days after US President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing the American government to call the lake “Lake America.”
“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 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.”
Al Jazeera reported that the baby-blue sign was unveiled at Grimsby, near Hamilton, and carries the message in French as well as English.
What the order actually does
Trump signed the order on Thursday and said it took effect immediately. Its operative text is narrower than the announcement: it gives the US Department of the Interior 30 days to register the change with the Geographic Names Information Service, the federal repository of domestic place names.
That authority reaches only as far as US federal usage. Other countries are not obliged to follow, and Canadian officials have dismissed the move. Lake Ontario is the smallest of the Great Lakes and borders both the Canadian province and New York State.
On Saturday Trump posted several AI-generated videos on social media, including one showing him kicking over a Lake Ontario sign and replacing it with one reading “Welcome to Lake America,” and another depicting Canada geese with the president’s hair patrolling the shoreline with rifles.
Ford said the renaming was retaliation because Trump “didn’t like Ontario and Canada standing up for ourselves.” Prime Minister Mark Carney has said that “things must be called by their name, and this lake is called Lake Ontario — today and forever.”
The trade dispute behind it
The exchange follows the collapse of trade talks and new US tariffs of 50 percent on $20 billion (C$28 billion) of Canadian goods. Canada has said it will impose “dollar for dollar” counter-tariffs next month.
Precedent
Trump signed a comparable order in 2025 renaming the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America.” Mexico rejected it, arguing that a single country cannot rename a shared body of international water, and brought a legal dispute against Google after the company changed the name in its maps application. Google Maps now shows “Gulf of America” to users in the United States, “Gulf of Mexico” to users in Mexico, and “Gulf of Mexico (Gulf of America)” everywhere else.
Four of the five Great Lakes — Ontario, Huron, Michigan and Erie — take their names from indigenous words. Lake Superior is named from an anglicised French word.
