08/28/2026
Spoiler alert: the issue isn’t the executive order to change the name of Lake Ontario — it’s what it’s designed to distract from
What Happened?
This afternoon, in the Oval Office, Trump signed an executive order renaming Lake Ontario “Lake America.” The order is called Honoring the American History of the Great Lakes and Renaming Lake Ontario as Lake America. He signed it flanked by oversized poster boards — one titled “Making the Great Lakes Even Greater,” with a gold “Lake America” label pasted over the lake. He said it was effective immediately. The order itself says something slightly different: the Secretary of the Interior has 30 days, working with the U.S. Board on Geographic Names, to update the Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) and “remove all references to Lake Ontario.” The Board then has to issue guidance so every federal map, contract, document and communication uses the new label.
The only Governor whose state actually touches this lake said: nah, we’re not calling it that. 🍻Kathy Hochul !
What Is In A Name?
The word “Ontario” predates colonization of this continent. Lake Ontario isn’t named after the province — the province is named after the lake. And the lake’s name was taken from an Iroquoian word that shows up in the written record in 1641, more than two centuries before Canada existed to adopt it.
Chief Margaret Sault of the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation responded before Trump even signed the order: “Lake Ontario has existed for thousands of years, long before Canada and the United States became the countries we know today.” As she put it: you cannot rename away our history.
PM Mark Carney posted that “Lake Ontario” comes from the Wendat word Ontari’io — “the lake is beautiful, the lake is big” — a name more than 400 years old, predating both Confederation and the U.S. Declaration of Independence. He said Canadians know that naming reality means calling it Lake Ontario, then, now and always. 🙏🏾🎉
🫣Critical context: the tweet is factually accurate, but this is a Prime Minister who has been quietly cutting funding to Indigenous files since ta
