{"id":222614,"date":"2026-08-31T09:58:46","date_gmt":"2026-08-31T09:58:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/canada-erects-giant-lake-ontario-sign-as-spat-with-trump-over-name-escalates-the-guardian\/"},"modified":"2026-08-31T09:58:46","modified_gmt":"2026-08-31T09:58:46","slug":"canada-erects-giant-lake-ontario-sign-as-spat-with-trump-over-name-escalates-the-guardian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/canada-erects-giant-lake-ontario-sign-as-spat-with-trump-over-name-escalates-the-guardian\/","title":{"rendered":"Canada erects giant \u2018Lake Ontario\u2019 sign as spat with Trump over name escalates – The Guardian"},"content":{"rendered":"

Meanwhile, Trump posts video of himself kicking over a Lake Ontario sign and replacing it with Lake America sign
Donald Trump<\/a> and Canada<\/a> continued a verbal duel on Saturday over the US government\u2019s administrative renaming of Lake Ontario, with the Ontario premier erecting a giant sign saying \u201cLake Ontario. Now and Always\u201d \u2013 and the American president posting a video of him tearing down an avatar of that sign, erecting a replacement saying Lake America, and dancing to YMCA.
Rhetoric over the naming of Lake Ontario is the public face of an escalating trade dispute between the US and its northern neighbor involving a 50% US tariff on Canadian steel and retaliatory tariffs from Ottawa.
Trump\u2019s order for the US government to refer to Lake Ontario as Lake America by Sunday had at least one prominent impact. Google Maps had changed Lake Ontario\u2019s name to Lake America for US users to reflect the president\u2019s executive renaming order.
Canada\u2019s prime minister Mark Carney has flat-out rejected the renaming, explaining that Lake Ontario derives from an Indigenous Wendat word meaning \u201cthe lake is beautiful, the lake is great\u201d that dates back more than 400 years.
With talks to resolve the trade <\/strong>dispute stalled, Trump issued an executive order on Thursday directing US agencies that the lake was now Lake America.
It revived memories of a dispute earlier in his second presidency with Mexico, which saw Trump direct US agencies to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America.
\u201cWe\u2019re going to be changing the name of Lake Ontario effective immediately to Lake America,\u201d Trump told reporters before he signed an executive order renaming the body of water among US federal agencies.
In a statement explaining why it was acquiescing to Trump\u2019s desired name for Lake Ontario, Google said its practice is to \u201creflect name changes in official government sources\u201d. Trump\u2019s order affects the US\u2019s federal Geographic Names Information System (GNIS), \u201cwhich sets the standard for official US maps\u201d, the tech company said.
Lake Ontario\u2019s name change \u201cdoes not have any impact on Canadian naming conventions or \u200bhow the rest of the \u200cworld refers to the \u200clake\u201d, Google said in a statement. And it said \u201cthose in Canada will continue to see \u2018Lake Ontario\u2019\u201d on Google Maps, \u201cand those outside \u2026 the US and Canada will see both names\u201d.
Google had done similarly in Trump\u2019s executive order<\/a> for the US government to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America. Google Map users in the US for now see<\/a> that body of water named as the \u201cGulf of America\u201d.
Meanwhile, 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<\/a>.
He posted one such video of an army of Canada geese<\/a> with Trump-like blond hair firing rifles in protection of Lake America. He published another of himself kicking over a Lake Ontario sign<\/a> and replacing it with Lake America while he danced in his distinctive way<\/a> to a soundtrack of the Village People hit YMCA<\/a>, which he has incorporated<\/a> into his public appearances for years.
Across the US\u2019s northern border, Ontario\u2019s premier, Doug Ford, replied with a two-stories-high billboard declaring \u201cLake Ontario. Now and Always,\u201d near Grimsby, Ontario. Ford said Trump was trying to rename the lake because Ontario and Canada were \u201cstanding up for ourselves\u201d, and he argued the name would outlast the president.
\u201cLong after President Trump is gone, it will still be called Lake Ontario,\u201d Ford said in a video posted on social media.
He appeared on Sunday on the ABC News program This Week and remarked that Trump\u2019s Lake Ontario renaming order was like \u201csomething out of Saturday Night Live,\u2019\u201d the famous NBC sketch comedy show.
\u201cNo one\u2019s going to call it Lake of America,\u201d Ford said. \u201cIt\u2019s been Lake Ontario for hundreds of years. It\u2019s going to continue being Lake Ontario.\u201d
In an interview with the Associated Press earlier, Ford said the late Ronald Reagan would be \u201cthrowing up\u201d over Trump\u2019s tariff policies.
Meanwhile, Manitoba\u2019s premier, Wab Kinew, said Trump\u2019s Lake America provocation was akin to an aging rock band trying to revive an old hit.
\u201cYou 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\u2019s the part of Donald Trump\u2019s presidency we\u2019re at now,\u201d Kinew said. \u201cLike he thought he had a real hit, a real golden oldie, with the Gulf of Mexico.
\u201cHe\u2019s trying to bring back that, and he\u2019s trying to play the hits for his base. But I think everybody here thinks it\u2019s a little sad, and it\u2019s not his best work.\u201d
Wendat Nation grand chief Pierre Picard called Trump\u2019s move an attempt to erase Indigenous history. \u201cI 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,\u201d Picard said.
Trump on Sunday afternoon published a social media post declaring \u201cCanada to be the worst\u201d.
\u201cI don\u2019t want Canadian anything. They\u2019ve been ripping us off for decades, and it\u2019s going to stop,\u201d Trump also wrote, referring to the ongoing US-Canada trade war.
Lake Ontario is one of North America\u2019s five Great Lakes, alongside Superior, Michigan, Huron and Erie. At 7,340 sq miles, Lake Ontario is the smallest of those in terms of surface area.
<\/span> The introduction to this article was amended on 30 August 2026 to clarify, as reported further down, that the \u201cLake Ontario. Now and Always\u201d sign was erected by Ontario\u2019s premier rather than by the country\u2019s administration.<\/p>\n

source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Meanwhile, Trump posts video of himself kicking over a Lake Ontario sign and replacing it with Lake America signDonald Trump and Canada continued a verbal duel on Saturday over the US government\u2019s administrative renaming of Lake Ontario, with the Ontario premier erecting a giant sign saying \u201cLake Ontario. Now and Always\u201d \u2013 and the American […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":222615,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-222614","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-us","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222614","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=222614"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222614\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/222615"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=222614"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=222614"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=222614"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}