{"id":665016,"date":"2026-08-31T10:28:12","date_gmt":"2026-08-31T10:28:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/665016\/"},"modified":"2026-08-31T10:28:12","modified_gmt":"2026-08-31T10:28:12","slug":"canada-erects-giant-lake-ontario-sign-as-spat-with-trump-over-name-escalates-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/665016\/","title":{"rendered":"Canada erects giant \u2018Lake Ontario\u2019 sign as spat with Trump over name escalates \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Donald Trump and Canada have continued a verbal duel 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.<\/p>\n

The US president, meanwhile, posted a video of him tearing down an avatar of that sign, erecting a replacement saying Lake America, and dancing to YMCA<\/p>\n

Rhetoric over the naming of Lake Ontario is the public face of an escalating trade dispute between the US and its northern neighbour involving a 50 per cent US tariff on Canadian steel and retaliatory tariffs from Ottawa.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s order for the US government to refer to Lake Ontario as \u201cLake America\u201d by Sunday had at least one prominent impact. Google Maps changed Lake Ontario\u2019s name to Lake America for US users to reflect the president\u2019s executive renaming order.<\/p>\n

Trump announced on Thursday he was changing the name of the smallest of the five Great Lakes, part of an escalating trade feud with Canada<\/a> that \u200bhas prompted the two countries to impose reciprocal tariffs on billions of dollars in goods.<\/p>\n

The US president\u2019s order affects the US Geographic Names Information System (GNIS), which \u2060sets the standards for official US maps. It does not have any impact on Canadian naming conventions or how \u200cthe \u200crest \u200bof the world refers to the lake.<\/p>\n

\"AA screenshot of Google Maps in the United States, showing “Lake America”. <\/p>\n

\u201cSince we update Google Maps to reflect name changes in official government sources, which is GNIS for the US, people using Maps in \u2060the US will see \u2018Lake America,\u2019 those in Canada will \u200bcontinue to see \u2018Lake Ontario,\u2019 and those outside of the US \u200band Canada will see both names,\u201d Google said in a blog post issued on Saturday.<\/p>\n

The White House, Canadian prime minister \u200cMark Carney\u2019s office and Ontario premier Doug Ford\u2019s \u200boffice did not immediately comment on Google\u2019s decision. <\/p>\n

[\u00a0The Irish Times view on Donald Trump and Lake Ontario: what\u2019s in a name?Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Google Maps made a similar change to the Gulf \u2060of Mexico last year, labelling it the \u201cGulf of America\u201d \u2060following Trump\u2019s executive order on \u200bhis first day in office renaming the body of water.<\/p>\n

Carney immediately rejected the lake\u2019s name change on Thursday. Democratic governor Kathy Hochul of New York, which shares a long border with Canada, declared that \u201cNew York won\u2019t be calling it that\u201d, while Phil Scott, the Republican governor of neighbouring Vermont, called Trump\u2019s decision \u201cpetty and disappointing\u201d on social media.<\/p>\n

\"AA sign for Lake Ontario at the Fifty Point Conservation Area in Grimsby. Photograph: Keito Newman\/The Canadian Press via AP <\/p>\n

Rhetoric over the naming of Lake Ontario is the public face of an escalating trade dispute between the US and its northern neighbour involving a 50 per cent US tariff on Canadian steel and retaliatory tariffs from Ottawa.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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 way to a soundtrack of the Village People hit YMCA, which he has incorporated into his public appearances for years.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cLong after president Trump is gone, it will still be called Lake Ontario,\u201d Ford said in a video posted on social media.<\/p>\n

He appeared on Sunday on the ABC News programme This Week and remarked that Trump\u2019s Lake Ontario renaming order was like \u201csomething out of Saturday Night Live\u201d, the famous NBC sketch comedy show.<\/p>\n

\"LakeLake Ontario and the skyline of Toronto, Canada. Photograph: Eugen Sakhnenko\/The New York Times<\/p>\n

\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<\/p>\n

In an interview with the Associated Press earlier, Ford said the late Ronald Reagan would be \u201cthrowing up\u201d over Trump\u2019s tariff policies.<\/p>\n

\u2013 Guardian and Reuters<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Donald Trump and Canada have continued a verbal duel over the US government\u2019s administrative renaming of Lake Ontario,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":665017,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[41],"tags":[9,10,995,13,14,823,6,11,12,15,16,5,7,8,107,1411,65,66,67],"class_list":["post-665016","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-world","tag-breaking-news","tag-breakingnews","tag-canada","tag-featured-news","tag-featurednews","tag-google","tag-headlines","tag-latest-news","tag-latestnews","tag-main-news","tag-mainnews","tag-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topstories","tag-us","tag-us-tariffs","tag-world","tag-world-news","tag-worldnews"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/117189655079205490","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/665016","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=665016"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/665016\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/665017"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=665016"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=665016"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=665016"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}