Donald Trump and Canada continued a verbal duel on Saturday over the US government’s administrative renaming of Lake Ontario, with the country erecting a giant sign saying “Lake Ontario. Now and Always” – 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’s 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’s name to Lake America for US users to reflect the president’s executive renaming order. Canada’s prime minister Mark Carney has flat-out rejected the renaming, explaining that Lake Ontario derives from an Indigenous Wendat word meaning “the lake is beautiful, the lake is great” that dates back more than 400 years.
With talks to resolve the trade 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. In a statement explaining why it was acquiescing to Trump’s desired name for Lake Ontario, Google said its practice is to “reflect name changes in official government sources”.
Trump’s order affects the US’s federal Geographic Names Information System (GNIS), “which sets the standard for official US maps”, the tech company said. The Lake of Ontario’s name change “does not have any impact on Canadian naming conventions or how the rest of the world refers to the lake,” Google said in a statement. And it said “those in Canada will continue to see ‘Lake Ontario’” on Google Maps, “and those outside … the US and Canada will see both names.” Google had done similarly in Trump’s executive order for the US government to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America.
US Google Map users for now see that body of water named as the “Gulf of America”. 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. He posted one such video of an army of Canada geese with Trump-like blond hair firing rifles in protection of Lake America.
He published another of himself kicking over a Lake Ontario sign and replacing it with Lake America while he danced in his distinctive to a soundtrack of the Village People hit YMCA, which he has implemented into his public appearances for years. Across the US’s northern border, Ontario premier Doug Ford replied with a two-stories high billboard declaring “Lake Ontario. Now and Always,” near Grimsby, Ontario.
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