OTTAWA/WASHINGTON – Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said on Thursday that the name "Lake Ontario" carries a long history and that Canadians will always use this name regardless of external changes.
Carney wrote in a post on X that the name came from the Wendat word Ontari'io, which means "the lake is beautiful, the lake is big."
He made the remarks after US President Donald Trump signed an executive order earlier on Thursday, directing the Department of the Interior to rename the lake "Lake America", as trade tensions between the two neighbors have been escalating.
The name is more than 400 years old, "predating both the Confederation of Canada and the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America," added the Canadian PM.
"We know that America is changing. Their trading relationships, their foreign policies, their national monuments, their hydronyms," he said.
RELATED ARTICLES
- US weighs more trade measures against Canada after retaliation
- Canada announces counter-tariffs on over 700 US goods
- Ottawa under pressure as 50% US tariffs draw near
- Poll shows over 75% of Canadians back ending US trade talks
Lake Ontario, one of the five Great Lakes of North America, straddles the US-Canada border, with the Canadian province of Ontario to the north and the US state of New York to the south.
Before signing the executive order on renaming Lake Ontario, President Trump said in the Oval Office: "We're gonna to be changing the name of Lake Ontario, effective immediately, to Lake America."
The move came just two days after he said on social media that the US is giving "serious consideration" to changing the name of Lake Ontario to "Lake America" given that "we don't expect to be doing much business with Ontario any longer."
The two sides failed to reach a trade deal on Aug 21, and the US imposed a 50-percent tariff on about $20 billion worth of Canadian goods on Aug 22. Canada responded by announcing "dollar-for-dollar" retaliatory tariffs on imports from the US, set to take effect on Sept 8.
