Canada installs large sign near U.S. border reading 'Lake Ontario Forever'

[Financial News] Trade tensions between the United States and Canada are escalating into a serious diplomatic spat over the name of Lake Ontario, a massive border lake shared by the two countries.
On the 30th local time, foreign media including the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) reported that after President Donald Trump signed an executive order to rename Lake Ontario as Lake America, Ontario Premier Doug Ford of Canada struck back by installing a large sign in a border area.
Ford unveiled a large sign on the shore of Lake Ontario in Grimsby, Ontario, about 40 kilometers from the State of New York, with the message "Lake Ontario. Now and Forever" in English and French. He said, "Before President Trump, this lake was Lake Ontario, and long after President Trump is gone, it will still be called Lake Ontario."
Of the five Great Lakes, all four except Lake Superior have names derived from Indigenous languages. Lake Ontario, the smallest of the five, straddles the border between Ontario, Canada, and the State of New York, United States. Except for Lake Michigan, the Great Lakes extend across both U.S. and Canadian territory.
The naming dispute erupted shortly after trade talks between the two countries collapsed. Tensions worsened after the United States imposed a 50% tariff on $20 billion worth of Canadian products, and Canada said it would respond with matching retaliatory tariffs starting next month.
In response, President Donald Trump signed an executive order immediately renaming Lake Ontario as Lake America and instructed the United States Department of the Interior to revise the official name in the Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) within 30 days. Trump later posted an AI-generated video on social media showing him kicking away a "Lake Ontario" sign and replacing it with one that said "Welcome to Lake America."
The Canadian federal and provincial governments dismissed Trump's executive order, and Prime Minister of Canada Mark Carney also said, "All things should be called by their original names, and the name of this lake is Lake Ontario today and forever."
Experts say the U.S. president has broad discretion over how geographic features are labeled within the country, but other nations are under no obligation to follow suit. Trump also issued an executive order shortly after taking office in 2025 to rename the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America, but the Mexican government rejected it, saying he could not unilaterally change the name of an internationally shared body of water.
At the time, global IT companies including Google responded by showing "Gulf of America" to U.S. users, "Gulf of Mexico" to users in Mexico, and both names to users in third countries, but the legal dispute continued.
[email protected] Yoon Jae-jun Reporter