Donald Trump signed an executive order on Thursday directing the federal government to rename Lake Ontario, making it Lake America, amid his escalating trade war with Canada.
The order directs federal agencies to adopt the name-change on US maps, documents and databases. But Trump has no authority to rename Canada’s portion of the lake, nor to compel Canada, international legal bodies, international mapmakers, or the rest of the world to adopt a new name.
The move follows a similar action the president took on the first day of his second term in office, when he signed an order renaming the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America”.
“We have a gulf and we have a lake – now all we need is an ocean. Maybe we’ll have to change the name of the Atlantic and/or the Pacific,” he told reporters, sitting at the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office. “Maybe we’ll change them both.”
After sailing Liberty ships in the Atlantic, Pacific, and Caribbean during the war my dad sailed the Great Lakes for years. He loved the ore boats.
