‘The dumbest timeline’: Canadians react to Trump’s plea to rename Lake Ontario ‘Lake America’
U.S. President Donald Trump is floating around the idea of renaming Lake Ontario as “Lake America,” and Canadians have a sinking feeling about it.
As tensions between the U.S. and Canada continue to rise amid an ongoing tariffs dispute, the president revealed he’s “giving serious consideration” to renaming Lake Ontario to “Lake America” — with the same laissez-faire attitude one might tell their hairdresser they’re “giving serious consideration” to getting bangs.
Trump shared the half-baked idea on Truth Social this morning, following the collapse of trade talks between the two countries.
“The United States is giving serious consideration to changing the name of Lake Ontario to Lake America in that we don’t expect to do much business with Ontario any longer. Thank you for your attention to this matter!” he writes.
Canadians on Reddit, meanwhile, are quick to weigh in, meeting Trump’s latest proposal with a familiar mix of disbelief, sarcasm, and plenty of jokes about just how absurd the whole thing has become.
“For someone who doesn’t need anything from us, he sure can’t keep our name out of his mouth,” one user writes.
If you often wake up to the news and question if a headline is real or something fabricated from the clever editors at The Beaverton or The Onion, you’re not alone.
“I am having a hard time telling what’s real and what’s satire these days,” a Redditor comments, while another writes, “Dang, I was really hoping the link would be Beaverton.”
“Are we living in an episode of Veep?” another one asks.
Meanwhile, a lot of Canadians are echoing a valid point that we are living in “the dumbest timeline.” One Redditor writes, “This really is the dumbest timeline. I swear, if this was presented as satire 20 years ago, people would say it was too far-fetched.”
“Looks like instead of remembering the Great Lakes using the acronym HOMES, the U.S. will have to use SHAME,” writes another user.
Other Redditors are going tit-for-tat, writing, “Well, we could rename one of our wastewater treatment ponds as Lake Trump.’
“The U.K. is considering renaming America as South Canada,” a user jokes.
No one seems to believe that all of this is coming from an 80-year-old man in a position of power and not Veruca Salt from Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory.
“My god, he’s literally a 12-year-old mean girl,” another user exclaims.
The jokes keep coming like the water on Lake Ontario keeps flowing, with one user writing, “Canada to rename Great Lakes to Strait of our moose.”
Others are more blunt, writing, “This might be the dumbest thing I read this year. What a loser.”
This is not the first time the U.S. president has sought to put his own stamp on a body of water.
On Jan. 20, 2025, he signed an executive order to rename the Gulf of Mexico to “Gulf of America,” along with Alaska’s Denali, the highest peak in North America, to “Mount McKinley,” changes that are now reflected on Google Maps in parentheses.
Not to mention, ever since 2024, Trump has been adamant about turning Canada into the 51st state — and we can all remember how Canadians reacted to that.