Amid tariff war with Canada, Trump has signed an executive order renaming the shared lake.
‘Typical Trump, silly joke’: ‘Lake America’ has Canadians laughing
United States President Donald Trump’s war on geography has opened up a new front – this time on the Canadian border.
Amid escalating trade tensions between Washington and Ottawa, Trump said he would rename the large body of water shared between the US and its northern neighbour.
We break down what Trump has announced, whether he can actually rename this particular body of water, and whether the rest of the world will have to use the new name.
During a news conference in the Oval Office of the White House on Thursday, Trump signed an executive order that changes the name of Lake Ontario to Lake America.
Lake Ontario is in North America, on the border between the Canadian province of Ontario to the north and the US state of New York to the south.
The name “Lake Ontario” is believed to be derived from the Huron Indigenous people’s Wendat language word “oniatarí:io,” which is thought to mean “lake of shining waters”, “great lake” or “beautiful lake”.
“The name Ontario is witness to a native presence that existed before the establishment of the United States and Canada, and which is crucial for expressing the historical depth of North America to students and wider communities,” Derek Alderman, the chancellor’s professor of geography at the University of Tennessee, told Al Jazeera.
“Trump’s executive order similarly is an attempt at erasing Indigenous culture from the map, exerting not just an ‘America-first’ ideology across the continent but a decidedly neocolonial geographic imagination in which the map and its names become tools for narrowing whose histories and contributions matter.”
The lake lends its name to the Canadian province of Ontario, which was founded in 1867.
The body of water has already survived attempts by the French in the 17th and 18th centuries to rename it and the name first appeared as “Lac Ontario” on maps in the 17th century, replacing earlier names which had honoured French officials or saints.
Trump said the change would be “effective immediately” and linked it to trade tensions with Ottawa, claiming Canada “has been ripping us off for a long time”.
“Well, they haven’t treated us well. The Canadian officials have treated us very badly. They’re nasty people,” Trump said.
“So the lake change – the Lake of America – was something I’ve been thinking about for a long time, actually.”
