Donald Trump’s “Lake America” decree was met across the border Saturday with a billboard-sized message on the opposing shoreline declaring “Lake Ontario. Now and Always” as Canadian leaders responded to the president’s move with varying degrees of shock, despair and downright disdain.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford was behind the billboard response to the change posed to the body of water that straddles both countries as Google announced it had begun rolling out changes to how its maps display the lake’s name – at least, for American users.
AP reports the politician was wearing a Team Canada soccer jersey when he unveiled the sign near Grimsby, Ontario, and posed for photographs.
The 24-by-12-foot sign stands on six-foot legs, putting its top about 18 feet above the ground — roughly two stories high. The message is repeated in French.
The display followed Trump’s executive order directing U.S. federal agencies to call Lake Ontario “Lake America,” as Breitbart News reported.
Ford said Trump was trying to rename the lake because Ontario and Canada were “standing up for ourselves” and argued the name would outlast the president, the AP report noted.
RELATED: Take That, Canada! Trump Signs Order Changing Lake Ontario to LAKE AMERICA
“Long after President Trump is gone, it will still be called Lake Ontario,” Ford said in a video posted on social media.
Trump waved off Ford’s comments as “bluster,” calling him Prime Minister Mark Carney’s “flunky” and the conservative leader as the “less charismatic, intelligent, and overall unimpressive brother” of the late Toronto Mayor Rob Ford.
Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew was quick to join in the cross-border repartee, comparing Trump to an aging rock band trying to revive an old hit, the AP report noted.
“You know when, like, a rock band is really over the hill and you see them like in a casino playing some song from like 50 years ago, I think that’s the part of Donald Trump’s presidency we’re at now — like he thought he had a real hit, a real golden oldie, with the Gulf of Mexico,” Kinew said, referring to Trump’s executive order renaming the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America.
“And he’s trying to bring back that, and he’s trying to play the hits for his base. But I think everybody here thinks it’s a little sad and it’s not his best work.”
Trump’s executive order gives the U.S. Department of the Interior 30 days to update the name change with the Geographic Names Information Service – the official repository of domestic geographic names in the U.S.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney is having none of it.
He has publicly rejected the move, noting the lake’s indigenous roots and the name predates both the Canadian Confederation and the U.S. Declaration of Independence.
The Associated Press contributed to this report
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