With a black marker on the map, Trump turns Lake Ontario threat into a video
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U.S. President Donald Trump has turned his threat to rename Lake Ontario into a visual message, appearing in a video with a map of the lake shared by Canada and the United States, crossing out "Lake Ontario" with a black marker and writing "Lake America" in its place.
In the clip, Trump said he was going to make a "little change" to the name before writing the new label on the map. He linked the move to his earlier decision to use "Gulf of America" as the U.S. federal name for the Gulf of Mexico. The video follows his statement two days earlier that the United States was giving serious consideration to changing Lake Ontario's name amid deteriorating trade relations with Canada and Ontario.
The video, however, does not mean Lake Ontario's official name has changed in Canada. The lake lies between Ontario and New York State, while official geographic naming in Ontario follows a provincial process involving the Ontario Geographic Names Board and approval by the province's Minister of Natural Resources and Forestry.
Canadian officials had already played down Trump's earlier proposal. Ontario Premier Doug Ford said Trump could call the lake whatever he wanted, but Canadians would continue to call it Lake Ontario. The federal government has also said it does not intend to respond to every social media post from the U.S. administration.
The Ontario name predates the modern states of both Canada and the United States and has Indigenous linguistic roots. Lake Ontario is one of North America's five Great Lakes and forms part of the geographic and economic connection between the two countries.
The video comes as the Canada-U.S. dispute has moved far beyond names and symbolism. Trade relations have deteriorated following failed negotiations, new U.S. tariffs on Canadian goods and retaliatory measures from Ottawa, turning Lake Ontario into the latest symbolic front in a much broader political and economic confrontation.
