President Donald Trump on Thursday signed an Executive Order instructing Interior Secretary Doug Burgum to rename Lake Ontario as “Lake America.”
The change is set to take effect immediately, he said. Trump earlier in the week had floated the idea of a new moniker for Lake Ontario, which borders the Canadian province of Ontario and the U.S. state of New York.
Trump signed a similar order upon returning to the White House last year, renaming the Gulf of Mexico as the "Gulf of America."
This most recent name change is the latest in a series of tit-for-tat measures amid an all-out trade war between the U.S. and Canada.
British Columbia’s Premier David Eby on Tuesday called for residents not to travel to America unless it's absolutely essential.
“I’m asking British Columbians: If you have a choice, please don’t travel to the United States. Choose another place to do your tourism,” Eby said at a press briefing. “If you can choose a Canadian product, instead of an American one, please choose it… by being our own best customer, we can help respond and support Canadians in every corner of this amazing country.”
While Eby is leading the charge on a travel boycott from the Canadian province, other lawmakers are further clamping down on a boycott of U.S. products.
“When you’re at war, you protect your own, you protect your own backyard,” said Ontario Premier Doug Ford on Wednesday. “You don’t go down to the U.S. and buy a product. There’s nothing that we can’t make here in Ontario, or across the country.”
Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne expressed a similar sentiment, telling reporters: “The biggest power we have, each and every one of us, is our purchasing power. We can choose when we go to the grocery store or to the hardware store to buy Canadian.”
Prior to Eby’s tourism plea, Canadian travel to the U.S. had shown a jump in visitors after a widely-reported decline.
In May, the number of Canadians visiting the U.S. was up by 9.9% compared to the same month a year prior, according to Statistics Canada. In June, the number of Canadian-resident return trips from the United States increased 5.0% year over year. The number of Americans visiting Canada was also higher, with a 6.1% rise year over year.
However, in the first quarter of 2026, Canadian residents took 5.5 million trips that included an outbound visit to the United States, a year over year decline of 10.6%. Spending while visiting the U.S. by Canadians during this period was also down by 13.6%.
Figures for the start of 2026 fall in line with a trend that has seen Canadian travel to the U.S. decline since Trump returned to Office last year.
Cell phone data analysis published by the University of Toronto in May found a 42% year-over-year median decline in Canadian travel to U.S. metropolitan areas.
The research also found that “when Canadians travel to the U.S., they are visiting fewer locations and staying for less time than they used to.”
