Province Launches Review After Maps Replace ‘Lake Ontario’ With ‘Lake America’

The Ontario government launched an online review over the weekend after some provincial and federal websites began displaying “Lake America” in place of “Lake Ontario.”

Maps on Hydro One, Metrolinx, Infrastructure Ontario, and the Liquor Control Board of Ontario (LCBO) websites all showed “Lake America” after Google modified the name of the lake on digital maps in the United States.

Minister of Public and Business Service Delivery and Procurement Stephen Crawford said the discrepancy appeared in Ontario because local sites were pulling map data directly from Google Maps.

“Following recent changes by Google, we’re actively reviewing our websites to make sure they all identify Lake Ontario by its correct name: Lake Ontario,” Crawford said in a social media post. “As Ontarians, we will always stand up for our province, our identity and the places that define it.”

U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Aug. 27 to officially rename Lake Ontario as Lake America.

The order came after trade talks between the two countries collapsed. Prime Minister Mark Carney last week announced 50 percent matching retaliatory tariffs on billions of dollars of U.S. goods in response to the White House imposing 50 percent tariffs on Canadian items.

Google Maps said in a weekend blog post it updates its maps to incorporate name changes from official government sources, including the U.S. Geographic Names Information Service (GNIS). The GNIS formally changed Lake Ontario to “Lake America” over the weekend.

That change subsequently showed up on Hydro One’s outage map on Aug. 30, but the electricity provider said the error has since been rectified.

“For a brief period yesterday, our outage map displayed an incorrect label for Lake Ontario as a result of an issue with a third-party mapping service,” a Hydro One spokesperson said in an Aug. 31 email. “The issue was identified and corrected yesterday evening.”

The LCBO online map, an online map on the Government of Canada’s Housing, Infrastructure and Communities Canada website and the map for Metrolinx, the province’s agency responsible for public transit in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area (GTHA) were also displaying “Lake America” but have since been corrected.

Google has said people using maps in Canada will continue to see “Lake Ontario,” and those in the United States will now see “Lake America.” Everyone outside of these countries will see a map displaying both names.

“These updates follow our long-standing policy for bodies of water with names that vary from country to country, and are starting to roll out now,” Google said in its weekend post.

Not all mapping services are following suit, however. Apple Maps and MapQuest have yet to adopt the president’s update.

MapQuest published a post online soon after the announcement, stating, “we’re not changing it.”

Reaction

The map mixups surfaced a day after Ontario Premier Doug Ford unveiled a sign near the lake in Winona, Ont., that read ‘Lake Ontario, Now and Always.’

“Long before President Trump, this lake was called Lake Ontario, and long after President Trump is gone, it will still be called Lake Ontario,” Ford said in a video while standing in front of the sign. “But just in case President Trump or anyone else forgets, we’ve set up the sign to remind them it’s Lake Ontario now and forever.”

Carney previously posted about Trump’s decision to alter the lake’s name, noting the name has existed for more than 400 years, predating both the Confederation of Canada and the United States Declaration of Independence.

“We know that America is changing. Their trading relationships, their foreign policies, their national monuments, their hydronyms,” he wrote. “Canadians also know that naming reality means calling it Lake Ontario—then, now and always.

Both Trump and White House communications director Steven Cheung posted pictures of the Google Maps name change to social media on Aug. 30.

“It’s official! LAKE AMERICA on Google Maps,” Cheung said. Trump’s Truth Social account simply posted an image showing the name change.

Trump argued last week that renaming the lake was justified geographically, claiming that most of the lake’s volume and deepest parts sit within United States territory.