Over the weekend, Google Maps hastily amended Lake Ontario, now displaying it as ‘Lake America’ in the US, with some Canadian services making the change as well. This change arrives only days after U.S. President Donald Trump issued his executive order on the matter.
On Thursday, President Trump issued an order to rename Lake Ontario to Lake America in retaliation for Canada’s ongoing trade feud with the US. As a result, Google updated its Google Maps platform to reflect the change in official government sources, including the U.S. Geographic Names Information System (GNIS).
So, Google Maps now renders the change to Lake America for users in the US. The company moved quickly, much to the dismay of users online. This change is similar to when President Trump signed the executive order to change the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. For most Canadians, Google Maps will still show Lake Ontario when searching for one of the five Great Lakes of North America.
“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 wrote in its post.
However, there are rare exceptions. Over the weekend, several websites for Canadian and Ontario entities began displaying Lake America on their maps. For instance, the Liquor Control Board of Ontario’s (LCBO’s) store locator, Hydro One’s outage map and GO Transit’s station finder all began rendering “Lake America.”
As reported by CBC, it appears as though these changes were made as an “error.” Speaking to the outlet, Hydro One states that it is “aware that Lake Ontario is being incorrectly labelled.” Metrolinx, the agency that owns GO Transit, also spoke to CBC on the matter. “We are actively reviewing our websites to make sure they all identify Lake Ontario by its correct name: Lake Ontario,” the company said.
Google Maps alternatives like Apple Maps and Waze have refrained from making any changes to Lake Ontario, even in the US. Although this may change under pressure from the US government, Apple and Waze have not folded to the changes in Trump’s flippant executive order.
Want to see more of our stories on Google?
P.S. Want to keep this site truly independent? Support us by buying us a beer, treating us to a coffee, or shopping through Amazon here. Links in this post are affiliate links, so we earn a tiny commission at no charge to you. Thanks for supporting independent Canadian media!
The stinky orange face having a crazy moment by demanding to change Lake Ontario to Lake America. Why Google change it to your search engine. Is Google just dumb like Donald Trump. He is crazy, he should locked up in the mental illness institution.
TDS much?
Imagine a world in which Canada would have the maturity to just ignore the petulant child who now found which buttons to push to elicit the loudest screaming.
BTW…it’s called “trolling” and “Orange man bad” is enjoying it at your expense.
But you do you man…
We have a pro-USA here.
You know instead of focusing on Donald Trump maybe us Canadians should focus on Mark Carney instead. Trump is trolling Carney. Its hilarious we have a government with no balls.
But balls to do what? It’s true that Trump’s trolling Canada, but he’s also the incredibly unstable and impulsive president of the US – our lone neighbour and largest trading partner. Canada has already made moves to further diversify our export economy, but we’re still extremely connected to the US in ways that can’t be changed overnight, and as satisfying as it might be to see Carney simply tell Trump to go blank himself, pissing him off still has negative real world consequences for Canadians. This is something that countries around the world are having to navigate, and many of those countries are in a far better position to do so given the specifics of their own economies and even just their geographical distance from the US.
BTW: I was listening to a Brazilian podcast the other day and they were discussing Trump’s baffling trade battle with Canada as an aside to a broader conversation about their own tariff issues. They pointed out something I’d never really thought of before: Canada doesn’t even have its own country code (for phone calls). We share one with the US.
If the fifth column and Quisling had a child…
IPiC always had a lot of MAGA supporters. Prove me wrong!