Ford also called Trump's renaming of Lake Ontario "disappointing."
Page B2From§Eachthe supper edition — 30 August 2026
Google Renames Lake Ontario 'Lake America' As Canada Warns Trade War Would Be Devastating
As it ran on the front
LAKE ONTARIO, a name, age approximately 350 years since European cartographers first wrote it down, and considerably older under the names that preceded it, died this week on Google Maps, following a brief renaming order out of Washington. It is survived by the lake itself, which remains, by treaty and by physics, half Canadian.
The name was not sick. It was not old. It worked fine. It told a boater where he was and a shipper where his freight was going, across one of the five bodies of water that make up the largest group of freshwater lakes on Earth. It did its job for three and a half centuries without complaint. Then a renaming order came down, and a map company that answers to no electorate carried it out on schedule, and 'Lake Ontario' became, for American users only, 'Lake America.'…
…(cont) Preceded in death, if we are keeping the ledger honest, by 'Gulf of Mexico,' renamed some months back by the same office for reasons never explained beyond the fact that it could be done. A pattern is not a coincidence once it repeats; it is a policy. The policy appears to be that any body of water touching American soil may be claimed by decree, regardless of what touches the other shore.
What touches the other shore, in this case, is Ontario, whose premier said this week that a trade war between the two countries that share this lake, this border, and a great deal of commerce would be devastating for both of them. He did not say devastating for effect. He said it the way a man says a number he has already run twice.
So here is the estate of the departed name: one lake, undivided, water rights unaffected, Canadian side still called what it has always been called, on their maps if not on ours. One trading partner, watching a renaming order land the same week their premier is warning about the cost of a fight nobody up there started. One search engine, following instructions, the way search engines do.
Malarkey, mostly, this business of renaming water. It costs nothing to type and it settles nothing on the ground. But when the ledger next comes due, the receipts won't say 'Lake America.' They'll say Ontario, in dollars, and somebody on this side will be surprised.
In lieu of flowers, the family asks that you check what your milk, your steel, and your car parts have in common before the invoice arrives.
“They renamed a lake nobody asked to rename, and the neighbor whose name got erased is the same neighbor we need for steel, lumber, and half our groceries. This isn't cartography, it's a receipt for who gets to draw the map when the money's on the line. Ontario keeps the water; we get the invoice.”
“It's just a map update, folks, nobody's actual property changed hands — well, the water's still Canadian, obviously, I mean, did I say 'Lake America'? That's not — that was never the plan, that's just what the software shows now. It's cosmetic. Mostly.”
The receipts
The company made the same change to the Gulf of Mexico last year.
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.