If you\u2019re angered by U.S. President Donald Trump\u2019s renaming of Lake Ontario to \u201cLake America,\u201d chances are that an American living in your neighbourhood might be just as outraged \u2014 if not more. <\/p>\n
Many Americans who\u2019ve made Canada their home are calling it an embarrassing, even \u201cchildish,\u201d stunt. <\/p>\n
Ben Davis, a retired law professor, said Trump\u2019s executive order to change the lake\u2019s name is \u201cso beneath the office of the United States president.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cAnd obviously it\u2019s another one of his distractions of the day, but it\u2019s just pitiful,\u201d Davis said.<\/p>\n
He is a permanent Canadian resident who moved from Virginia in February 2025 and has since been living in Quebec, where his wife is from. <\/p>\n
Davis noted that Lake Ontario was mentioned by that name in the 1794 Canandaigua Treaty, signed by the first U.S. president George Washington and the Six Nations after the American Revolution. Renaming it more than 230 years later is nothing short of \u201cnonsense,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe name was good enough for George Washington and I don\u2019t see why it\u2019s not good enough for Donald Trump.\u201d<\/p>\n
More than a million Americans, including visitors on long-term visas and dual citizens, live in Canada, according to 2023 estimates from the Association of Americans Resident Overseas.<\/p>\n
Dawna E. Wade, who lives with her wife in Annapolis Royal, N.S., is among those who see Trump going after Lake Ontario\u2019s name as plainly ridiculous. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not his to rename,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd even if it were in the purview of the United States, he doesn\u2019t get to do it unilaterally.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump signed the order to change the name as tensions between the United States and Canada escalated following a breakdown in trade talks, and after the president and Ontario Premier Doug Ford traded insults over tariffs. The executive order only holds water in the United States, and has been widely dismissed in Canada. <\/p>\n
Ford and Prime Minister Mark Carney have said the large body of water shared between the two countries will always be known as Lake Ontario, regardless of what Trump calls it.<\/p>\n
A recent Ipsos\/Reuters poll suggested the lake renaming was not popular within the United States either, with only 14 per cent of roughly 1,000 Americans surveyed countrywide saying they supported the move.<\/p>\n
For Wade, distancing herself from America is about much more than geographical names.<\/p>\n
She said she and her wife moved to Canada from North Carolina in May because they didn\u2019t feel safe in the United States anymore due to their sexual orientation, their Jewish faith and left-leaning politics. <\/p>\n
Wade, who is a Canadian citizen by descent, was born in Los Angeles and spent most of her life in the United States. She said she had visited Canada only a few times before making the final move. Her wife, however, had never been in Canada.<\/p>\n
The transition has been smooth, she said. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe have been not only welcomed, but truly embraced. People are not only kind, but they are helpful,\u201d she said. \u201cI don\u2019t know that I had any expectations before we moved, but our experience has far surpassed anything that I could have imagined.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chris Palermo, an American who lives in Hamilton with his Canadian wife, called the Lake Ontario name change a \u201cuseless\u201d knee-jerk reaction by Trump after he failed to get what he wanted at the negotiating table. <\/p>\n
He said he is more disappointed in Google and Apple for changing the lake\u2019s name on their maps for U.S. users.<\/p>\n
Palermo, who moved from Long Island, N.Y, three years ago, said he has noticed that support for Trump\u2019s \u201coutrageous, outlandish actions\u201d is diminishing rapidly even among his hard-core supporters amid a high cost of living made worse by trade disputes and the United States\u2019 war with Iran. <\/p>\n
Palermo said moves such as renaming Gulf of Mexico and Lake Ontario could also be part of a strategy to divert attention from the Trump administration\u2019s domestic failures. <\/p>\n
\u201cEvery time there is a groundswell of opposition to the Epstein files, the war in Iran, affordability, et cetera, something outrageous has to happen to take that approach away,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
In addition to waging a trade war, Trump has also repeatedly threatened Canada\u2019s sovereignty and mused about the country becoming the \u201c51st state.\u201d <\/p>\n
London, Ont., resident Chris Kubinski said he was so outraged by those threats of annexation that he decided to renounce his U.S. citizenship and \u201cdivorce\u201d Trump\u2019s America.<\/p>\n
\u201cLiterally when he started talking about the 51st state, \u2018Canada\u2019s not a country,\u2019 all that negative rhetoric, I just kind of went, \u2018That\u2019s it, I\u2019m done,\u2019\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
Kubinski moved to Canada with his family in the 1970s when he was a child, and later married a Canadian woman with whom he raised a family. He became a Canadian citizen two years ago.<\/p>\n
As for Trump\u2019s Lake Ontario renaming order, Kubinski said \u201cit\u2019s childish. It\u2019s bizarre.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m actually surprised he didn\u2019t try and name it \u2018Lake Trump,\u2019 because he likes to put his name on absolutely everything,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 6, 2026. <\/p>\n
Sharif Hassan, The Canadian Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If you\u2019re angered by U.S. President Donald Trump\u2019s renaming of Lake Ontario to \u201cLake America,\u201d chances are that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":200006,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[17,2136,113,2131],"class_list":["post-200005","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-canada","tag-canada","tag-ontario-quebec","tag-politics","tag-social"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200005","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=200005"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200005\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/200006"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=200005"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=200005"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=200005"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}