A sign on the Canadian side of the border of Lake Ontario, after Trump renamed it Lake America.
Image: AFP
Laura Beveridge
Serafino Rosso lives in a big home in this tiny town overlooking the Great Lake it’s named after. When President Donald Trump renamed the lake, Rosso thought: Why stop there?
“I would like it if they changed the name here to the Town of America: The Town of America on the Lake of America,” Rosso, a 41-year-old telecoms manager, said proudly while standing outside Ontario’s lone grocery store. “It makes me feel really patriotic. It felt Canadian before.”
Trump escalated a trade war with Canada with his executive order renaming Lake Ontario to Lake America, sparking an international outcry. Even in places where most people love Trump, not everyone is on board with upending centuries of tradition to score points in an improvised trade war.
Nowhere is the issue more salient than the place called Ontario on the U.S. side of the lake. Republicans have mixed feelings about the rebrand in this lakefront Upstate New York community of 10,000 in a county that Trump has decisively won in his presidential runs.
“I don’t think the lake’s name should be changed because it’s history,” Dave Rupp, who runs the town’s liquidation store and voted for Trump in 2024. “And I don’t like changing history.”
Ontario was originally named Freetown in 1807 in honor of the first settler, Freeman Hopkins. Then it was renamed Ontario less than a year later for the lake forming its northern boundary.
Today, Ontario has seven churches, two Dunkin’ restaurants and a town hall. Stickers on pickup trucks read “Respect our farmers.”
The influence of agriculture on the town shapes how people view Trump’s feud with Canada. Some hope his sweeping tariffs on Canadian goods, including agricultural products, would ultimately help American farmers by easing competition across borders.
The executive order states that the lake’s name change is meant “to recognize the extraordinary contributions of the American people and the rich heritage of our history by naming great natural landmarks for our shared achievements.” But while signing the order, Trump told reporters that Canada “has been ripping us off for a long time on trade, very sadly.” Trump similarly ordered the Gulf of Mexico be renamed the Gulf of America last year in a dispute over immigration.
Cassandra Tylenda, who voted for Trump, said that she tries to avoid politics, but she hopes that Trump’s tariffs help local farmers. Her grandparents had a dairy farm, and she has a small farm where she grows and cans peaches and pickles.
But that doesn’t mean she wants to rename the lake.
“I like Lake Ontario better,” Tylenda, 29, said while bartending at a local sports bar and restaurant. “But there’s nothing I can do about it,” she added with a shrug.
The name change has also struck a nerve with the president’s detractors.
Rochester Mayor Malik Evans, who leads the heavily Democratic lakefront city west of Ontario, dismissed Trump’s executive order as a “publicity stunt.”
Serena Eaton, who lives near Ontario, said the renaming was a “distraction” from the Epstein files, the war in Gaza and other issues the Trump administration is facing.
“America doesn’t just own the lake,” Eaton, 24, said. “I’m not going to call it Lake America. But my town is really redneck. I’m sure a lot of people will just switch their brains off and tune out sensible reason.”
Charles Smith, a member of the Cayuga Nation who lives just outside Ontario and has lived in New York and Canada, noted the lake’s name has deeper roots far preceding American politics.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney highlighted that same history in response to Trump’s order, explaining in an X post that the lake’s name comes from “the Wendat word Ontari’io, which, appropriately, means ‘the lake is beautiful, the lake is big.’”
“It’s been Lake Ontario for a very, very long time,” Smith, 59, said in an interview outside of one of the two Dunkin’ restaurants. “And it will always be Lake Ontario.”
The name is already being erased from some official sources. The U.S. Interior Department is updating its geographic systems to reflect Lake America as the new name. Over the weekend, Google Maps changed Lake Ontario’s name to Lake America for U.S. users. But Canadians will continue to see the name Lake Ontario.
Some cheered on the revision. After an afternoon riding his boat on the newly christened Lake America, Frankie Amalfi, 33, praised Trump’s leadership in taking on what he saw as Canada’s unfair trade advantage.
“He will tell you right off the bat that Canada’s been getting us for years,” Amalfi said as he reclined in Ontario Beach Park’s Marina in Rochester. “He doesn’t let them walk all over us.”
Soaking in the last of the day’s sun to the sound of the lapping lake, Amalfi reveled in how the new name annoyed its detractors and referenced a statement made by the president while signing the executive order.
“We have the Gulf of America, the Lake of America,” Amalfi said. “All we need now is the Ocean of America.”
