Ontario Premier Doug Ford, right, and Niagara West Member of Provincial Parliament Sam Oosterhoff unveil a sign for Lake Ontario at the Fifty Point Conservation Area in Grimsby, Ontario, Canada, on Saturday, Aug. 29, 2026. (Keito Newman/The Canadian Press via AP)
Keito Newman/The Canadian Press/AP
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Ontario Premier Doug Ford unveiled a giant billboard on the Canadian shoreline on Saturday, with the message “Lake Ontario — Now and Always,” hitting back at President Trump’s efforts to rename the lake “Lake America.” The sign, written in both English and French, was put up near the U.S. border, along a major road many Americans travel on when visiting Canada.
“President Trump can call it whatever he wants, but I can tell you the rest of the world will always call it Lake Ontario,” Doug Ford told reporters.
“We’re resilient and we’re strong Canadians who are always going to protect our sovereignty, always, and we’ll never ever back down from a bully, ever.”
Ford echoed Canada’s prime minister Mark Carney who last week said in a post on X, “Canadian women and men … know that things must be called by their name, and this lake is called Lake Ontario — today and forever.”
President Trump signed an executive order last week directing the federal government to rename the lake, which sits between New York and Canada. It’s the latest in his escalating dispute with Canada, and follows a similar move from the president last year to rename the Gulf of Mexico, the Gulf of America.
“We have a gulf, and we have a lake, now all we need is an ocean,” Trump told reporters at the Oval Office signing.
Trump went on to say he was renaming the lake because trade talks with Canada had gone badly.
“People — oftentimes they’ll ask me, who’s the worst to deal with on trade? And I said, that’s easy. Canada. They are the worst at trade. And they feel entitled, and just — we can’t have that,” Trump said.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford unveils a sign for Lake Ontario at Fifty Point Conservation Area in Grimsby, Ontario, Canada, on Saturday, Aug. 29, 2026.
Keito Newman/The Canadian Press/AP
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Keito Newman/The Canadian Press/AP
The spat comes as trade negotiations between the two countries collapsed last week, with Trump announcing he would impose a 50% tariff on a broad range of Canadian imports, escalating a trade war with the U.S.’ longtime ally. Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney responded by promising to match U.S. tariffs, “dollar for dollar.”
In a post on Truth Social on Sunday, President Trump said “Canada has been ripping us off for years – NO LONGER!”
The edict renaming the lake — as with the order to rename the Gulf of Mexico — only applies to how the U.S. government refers to the lake, which has a U.S. side and a Canadian side, with the border cutting down the middle.
While Canada pushes back, some are already changing how they refer to the lake. In a blog post on Saturday, Google said it had formally changed the name for “Lake Ontario” to “Lake America” in the United States, saying that it updates Google Maps “to reflect name changes in official government sources.”
The tech firm said people using Maps in the U.S. will see it named “Lake America”, while those in Canada will continue to see “Lake Ontario.” Those outside of the U.S. and Canada will now see both names.
“These updates follow our long-standing policy for bodies of water with names that vary from country to country,” Google said.
Trump’s order to rename the Gulf of Mexico led to a legal dispute between Mexico — which rejected the name change — and Google, which renamed the gulf in Maps. For users in the U.S., the body of water is now labelled “Gulf of America,” while those in Mexico see the “Gulf of Mexico.” Those in other countries see the “Gulf of Mexico (Gulf of America).”
New York Governor Kathy Hochul said her state — the only U.S. state to border the lake — would not be calling it Lake America. In a video posted to her Youtube channel, Hochul said renaming the lake was “deflecting from the real needs of Americans.”
