U.S. President Donald Trump is threatening to rename Lake Ontario to “Lake America,” according to a social media post Tuesday morning.
“The United States is giving serious consideration to changing the name of Lake Ontario to Lake America in that we don’t expect to doing much business with Ontario any longer. Thank you for your attention to this matter!” reads the president’s post on Truth Social.
The post follows a day of tension amid a breakdown in Canada-U.S. trade talks, where Ontario Premier Doug Ford told the president he could “kiss my ass” and Trump referred to the premier as “Flunky Ford.”
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Ford’s initial comments aired on Toronto radio station Newstalk 1010 Monday in response to the new tariffs. He later doubled down in a news conference in Hamilton, Ont. During the conference Ford also said that “everything is on the table” when it comes to retaliation measures.
On Monday afternoon, Trump posted to Truth Social referring to Ford’s commentary as “bluster” and referred to both Ford and Carney as “clowns” and bad leaders.
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Trade negotiations between Canada and the United States fell apart last week, which Prime Minister Mark Carney said was due to the Trump administration introducing unacceptable measures, including restrictions on Canada’s ability to sign deals with other countries.
On Saturday, 50 per cent U.S. tariffs on about $28 billion worth of Canadians goods came into effect. Prime Minister Mark Carney said retaliatory, dollar-for-dollar tariffs will hit the U.S. Sept. 8.
When asked on CNN Tuesday if it was time to bring the temperature down on the back-and-forth with President Trump, Ford said that would be a good idea.
“Things got a little heated. It got a little personal yesterday between the president and myself,” Ford told host Wolf Blitzer. “It’s time to get back to the table. Let’s negotiate a fair deal, because it’s hurting the U.S., it’s hurting Canada.”
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Ford said Canada is the number one trading partner with the U.S. and he is concerned for Americans who are seeing the cost of goods rise. He called for both countries to come together to build “Fortress North America,” saying Canadians love American people — something he repeated in a following interview with Fox News.
“When President Trump wants to attack our sovereignty and attack our businesses and people in Ontario, I can’t roll over,” he said on CNN. “My job is to protect Ontario and Canada and, ironically, protect the American people.”
Jaime Watt, political strategist and executive chairman of PR firm Navigator, says he is surprised it took President Trump this long to threaten the name change.
“He’s got a very limited playbook. He’s got about four things he does, and he repeats them over again,” Watt told CBC Radio’s Metro Morning Tuesday. “First it was the Gulf of Mexico, now it’s Lake Ontario. It’s like trying to deal with a four-year-old having a temper tantrum.”
Watt said Trump has done what many other politicians haven’t been able to do, which is unite the country, but his approach cannot go on.
“You can’t let the schoolyard bully continue to take your lunch. You’ve got to put your foot down,” he said.
To that effect, Mississauga Mayor Carolyn Parrish fired back against Trump in a post to social media platform X Tuesday.
“Dear Mr. Trump: Since the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation established their homes close to and along the shores of this lake, it has been our lifeblood,” she said. “I, and everyone in Mississauga, am proud to be living along the shores of LAKE ONTARIO. We will defend its good name!”
Mary Baxter, a PhD candidate at Western University and expert in the history of the Great Lakes, says there is a real possibility of this threat becoming reality in some form. She points to January 2025, when Trump renamed the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America in one of his first executive orders after his inauguration.
“With this president we have seen that he has announced certain intentions and he’s followed through with them,” she said.
Since Canada and the U.S. split the lake jurisdictionally, Baxter says each country is free to name shared geographic features what it wants, though how the lake is internationally recognized would come down to politics and preference. She says changes to digital platforms like American-owned Google Maps could be more immediate, should the move go through.
This, Baxter says, would be a shame. She says Lake Ontario has carried this name since before the American Revolution.
“Often we don’t know what’s important to us until we are at the verge of having it taken away,” she says. “When you think of a name that has stuck for so long, like Lake Ontario, I would think that it’s important not only to Ontarians, but certainly for the First Nations who still make their homes around its waters.”
