President Donald Trump further ripped into Canada as the U.S. trade war with the country escalates, trashing its leadership as the “worst” of all countries he’s dealt with. While Trump’s insults against Canada are nothing new, his…
Page A13From§Eachthe supper edition — 30 August 2026
Trump calls Canada's leaders 'worst' of any country; Google renames Lake Ontario 'Lake America' by his order.
As it ran on the front
Let's be clear: renaming a lake is not erasure, it's clarity. The administration's position, and I've read the executive order twice, is that American waterways should carry American names, and Lake Ontario sits half in Canada, so technically this is a — wait, no, it's entirely a labeling change on a mapping app, not a treaty revision, not a boundary dispute, nothing that would concern the joint water commissions, which — did I just bring up an international body? That's not the point I wanted to make.
The point is optics. When the President says Canada's leadership is the 'worst' of any country America trades with, and shortly after Google Maps ships an update swapping 'Lake Ontario' for 'Lake America,' that is not a coordinated campaign of grievance politics dressed up as cartography. It is, and I want to be precise here, exactly that, actually. I withdraw the denial.…
…(cont) Look at the mechanics: an executive order does not normally instruct a private company's product team, and yet here we are, with millions of users opening an app to check traffic and getting a geography lesson in presidential mood instead. Defenders will say it's harmless, a cosmetic swap, no different from renaming a stadium. Sure. Except stadiums don't share a maritime border with a sovereign nation whose leadership was just publicly ranked as this administration's least favorite on Earth.
Google's statement, and I have it here, cites alignment with federal guidance, which is corporate for 'we did not want to have this fight.' That's not corruption, that's compliance, and there's a difference, even if I can't currently tell you what it is.
The larger defense, and I do believe this one, is that none of this changes shipping lanes, water rights, or the underlying compact governing the lake. The water is still binational. It still flows where it flowed yesterday. Only the label moved, and labels are cheap, which is sort of the whole point of doing it this way: maximum symbolism, zero cost, and a talking point for anyone who thinks strength is measured in cartography rather than, say, trade balances or actual diplomacy.
I'll stand by that defense. Mostly. I may need to revisit the border point.
“They can't lower your grocery bill or fix a single supply line, but somebody found the afternoon to relabel a lake because the boss called Canada 'worst.' That's the tell — when the executive branch has spare capacity for branding, not your invoice, watch where the actual attention goes. Next month it's probably the sky.”
“This is just standardizing terminology for American map users, nothing more — the order doesn't touch borders, doesn't touch treaties, it's a label change, that's the whole story, that's it, that's — okay, it is a little bit tied to the Prime Minister comment, fine, but mostly labels.”
The receipts
Google updated its Maps application on Sunday in adherence with an executive order President Donald Trump signed on Thursday that renamed Lake Ontario to Lake America. Titled, “Honoring the American history of the Great Lakes and renaming…
Tech giant Google faced widespread criticism over the weekend for becoming the first major online map provider to change the name of "Lake Ontario" to "Lake America" for its US users, after President Donald Trump ordered the name change in…
President Trump said Sunday he does not want U.S. businesses to import Canadian goods amid continued tariff tensions between the two countries. In a post on Truth Social, Trump said his tariffs “revived, and indeed saved” the American…
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.