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Lake Ontario labelled as “Lake America” appeared on some Saskatchewan maps on Monday, days after U.S. President Donald Trump made the change.
On the morning of Aug. 31, various maps in the province displayed the body of water as “Lake America.”
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The SaskAlert map temporarily displayed Lake America until Monday afternoon. (Saskatchewan Public Safety Agency website)
That included SaskPower’s outage map, the Saskatchewan Public Safety Agency’s SaskAlert map, and SaskTel’s coverage map.
On Monday afternoon, SaskTel wrote in an email that it had “updated the settings on our website to revert the name back to Lake Ontario.” This screenshot is from Monday morning. (SaskTel website)
The exception was Saskatchewan’s Highway Hotline. It displayed Lake Ontario Monday morning.
The Americanized naming comes down to the mapping platform the three institutions use: Google.
“Google changed the name to Lake America for use within the United States, which in turn affected the SaskPower website and many other entities in Canada,” SaskPower wrote in an emailed statement.
In a post on its corporate website, Google said it made the switch because the U.S. government’s geographic names database formally changed it.
While Canadians were still meant to see it written out as Lake Ontario on Google Maps, outdated settings on these sites led to the change.
By Monday afternoon, SaskTel, SaskPower, and SPSA had updated these settings, reverting the lake’s name to Lake Ontario.
A person takes a picture of the newly unveiled sign for Lake Ontario at Fifty Point Conservation Area in Grimsby, Ont., on Saturday, Aug. 29, 2026. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Keito Newman)
Renaming a Great Lake
Trump signed an executive order on Aug. 27 to rename one of the five Great Lakes Lake America.
It’s just the latest in a string of jabs towards Canada during the escalating trade war.
The original name predates Canada and the U.S., and the province of Ontario gets its name from the body of water.
Trump’s decision garnered backlash.
In a response on social media, Prime Minister Mark Carney wrote that Canadians know Lake Ontario by its original name, “then, now, and always.”
Wendat Nation Grand Chief Pierre Picard told The Canadian Press his nation was “shocked” by the renaming, saying it’s an attempt to eradicate their history.
Assembly of First Nations National Chief Cindy Woodhouse said Indigenous languages, people and nations existed long before the U.S. Constitution or Confederation.
The action isn’t dissimilar to a different executive order signed by the president last year, when he changed the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America.
According to U.S. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, Trump’s contacted Apple, trying to pressure the company to do the same as Google and change Lake Ontario’s name on its maps.
— with files from The Canadian Press
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