‘Long after President Trump is gone, it will still be called Lake Ontario’ — Premier Doug Ford fires back at ‘Lake America’ decree with giant sign

Ontario Premier Doug Ford answered President Donald Trump’s “Lake America” decree Saturday with a billboard-sized message on the Canadian shoreline: “Lake Ontario.

Now and Always.” Wearing a Team Canada soccer jersey, Ford unveiled the sign near Grimsby, Ontario, and posed for photographs.

The 24-by-12-foot (7.3-by-3.6 meter) sign stands on 6-foot (1.8-meter) legs, putting its top about 18 feet (5.5 meters) above the ground — roughly two stories high.

The message is repeated in French.

It was the latest show of defiance after Trump signed an executive order directing U.S. federal agencies to call Lake Ontario “Lake America.” After months of tariffs , threats to make Canada the 51st U.S. state and personal attacks on its leaders , the move has been met in Canada largely with ridicule.

Ford said Trump was trying to rename the lake because Ontario and Canada were “standing up for ourselves” and argued the name would outlast the president.

“Long after President Trump is gone, it will still be called Lake Ontario,” Ford said in a video posted on social media.

Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew compared Trump to an aging rock band trying to revive an old hit “You know when a rock band is really over the hill and you see them like in a casino playing some song from like 50 years ago.

I think that’s the part of Donald Trump’s presidency we’re at now, Like he thought they had a real hit, a real golden oldie, with the Gulf of Mexico ,” Kinew said, referring to Trump’s executive order renaming the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America.

“And he’s trying to bring back that, and he’s trying to play the hits for his base.

But I think everybody here thinks it’s a little sad and it’s not his best work.” The mockery was not limited to politicians.

Canadian historian Robert Bothwell was even more scathing.

“The greatest country on earth takes this moron seriously?” Bothwell said.

But Bothwell said the dispute was more serious than the jokes, arguing Trump’s broader aim was “to subordinate Canada and at best make it a colony, at worst absorb it into the United States.” Nelson Wiseman, professor emeritus at the University of Toronto, said Trump “would like Canada to act like a vassal state, but it refuses to do so.