WASHINGTON — U.S. President Donald Trump contacted Apple directly to get the company to change the name of Lake Ontario to “Lake America,” a top administration official said Monday. U.S. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum told the Fox Business network the body of water’s name might soon change on Apple maps. Trump signed an executive order last week to rename the Great Lake as tensions between the two countries escalated following a breakdown in trade talks. Google Maps updated its service to identify the body of water as “Lake America” for users in the United States over the weekend. The company said in a post on its corporate website Saturday the change was made because the U.S. government’s geographic names database had formally renamed the lake. Users in Canada will still see it displayed as Lake Ontario on Google Maps, while people elsewhere in the world will see both names. In a social media post Thursday, Prime Minister Mark Carney said Canadians know Lake Ontario will be known by its original name “then, now and always.” Lake Ontario, one of the five Great Lakes, is located between Ontario and New York. The province was named after the lake. Ontario Premier Doug Ford unveiled a large sign declaring “Lake Ontario, now and always” on Saturday in Winona, a small lakeside community in Hamilton. Trump spent much of the weekend posting on social media about the name change and making inaccurate claims about Canada. He claimed Canadian businesses are moving to the United States and that Canada has been ripping off the United States for decades. Republicans and members of Trump’s administration fanned out across U.S. news stations Monday to make the case for the name change and Trump’s tariffs on Canada. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told CNBC he was meeting his Canadian counterpart at the gathering of G20 finance ministers in North Carolina this week. When asked whether the U.S. is in a tit-for-tat trade war with Canada, Bessent said, “I don’t think you can be in a tit-for-tat with someone who’s 13 times larger than you are.” He accused Carney of turning the trade talks into a “political shouting match” and said the U.S. isn’t at war with Canada. “What are they going to do, take their two submarines from the Edmonton mall and sic them on us?” Bessent said. When Republican Rep. Andy Harris of Maryland was asked about trade tensions on the far-right Newsmax new service, he suggested the United States make Alberta the 51st state and said there’s “tremendous oil reserves there.” “The socialism doesn’t work in Western Canada,” he said. “A lot of those provinces don’t want to be associated with Ottawa and the president is taking advantage of it.” Trade talks between Canada and the United States fell apart Aug. 21 when the countries accused each other of last-minute changes to a proposed interim trade deal. Trump first threatened to change the name of Lake Ontario during a war of words with Ford. The premier called the president a bully and a loser Aug. 24, while Trump said Ford was a “less charismatic” and less intelligent version of his late brother Rob. Trump signed a similar executive order last year to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. The order applies only to U.S. federal documents and geographic services, but some online map services and American news agencies have taken to calling it the Gulf of America. This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 31, 2026. Kelly Geraldine Malone, The Canadian Press With files from Kyle Duggan in Ottawa
