While Canadian government officials have denounced Donald Trump’s move to rename Lake Ontario, several Quebec official websites and agencies displayed the name “Lake America” on their maps.
Quebec 511, the Ministère des Transports du Québec’s road and transportation information service, displayed the name “Lake America” on its website Monday morning, which was changed to Lake Ontario by Monday afternoon. The Société québécoise du cannabis website had the same issue Monday morning.
“This display originated from map data provided by Google Maps, whose services Québec 511 uses for the geographic representation of the road network. Depending on the regional settings applied by this provider, certain geographic names may vary, and a recent adjustment made by Google explains the unusual display observed,” Quebec’s transport ministry wrote in a statement, asserting that the name displayed on the map did not impact the accuracy of the traffic information.
The SQDC also fixed the naming issue on their website Monday.
“It was caused by a vendor who was able to resolve the issue as soon as it was brought to their attention,” a spokesperson for the company wrote in an email statement.
The U.S. president signed an executive order on Thursday that Trump said renames the body of water between Ontario and New York “effective immediately.”
Over the weekend, multiple Quebec media outlets reported that the SAQ also displayed Lake America, which appeared to have been changed by Monday.
Quebec Premier Christine Fréchette called on Quebec agencies to remediate the name change on their websites.
“I am calling on the companies in question to present us with measures to correct this error — because, as far as I’m concerned, it is an error. That lake is called Lake Ontario, and it will continue to be called Lake Ontario. And our computer systems will have to reflect that reality,” she told reporters Monday at a campaign stop in St-Colomban.
Prime Minister Mark Carney dismissed Trump’s attempt to rename Lake Ontario, whose name comes from the Wendat word Ontari’io, “which, appropriately, means “the lake is beautiful, the lake is big,’” Carney wrote in a post on X.
“The name is more than 400 years old, predating both the Confederation of Canada and the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America. We know that America is changing. Their trading relationships, their foreign policies, their national monuments, their hydronyms. Canadians also know that naming reality means calling it Lake Ontario — then, now and always, ” Carney said.
Google announced Saturday on its corporate blog that it has formally changed the name for “Lake Ontario” to “Lake America” in the United States.
“Since we update Google Maps to reflect name changes in official government sources, which is GNIS (Geographic Names Information System) for the U.S., people using Maps in the U.S. will see ‘Lake America,’ those in Canada will continue to see ‘Lake Ontario,’ and those outside of the U.S. and Canada will see both names,” the tech company wrote in its news release.
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