Trump Again…. Oh for heaven’s sake: 1)Trump contacted Apple directly to change name of Lake Ontario to Lake America: Burgum; 2)Google has changed Lake Ontario’s name for the US; 3)’Lake Ontario Now and Always’: Ford unveils new sign; 4)Blue Rodeo’s Greg Keelor says ‘Lake Ontario’ lyric now an anti-Trump rallying cry; 5) (Update) Pentagon defends Hegseth’s controversial post about Canadian cadet program

1)Trump contacted Apple directly to change name of Lake Ontario to Lake America: Burgum

Courtesy Barrie360.com and Canadian Press

By Kelly Geraldine Malone, August 31, 2026

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.

— With files from Kyle Duggan in Ottawa

2)Addendum – Google has changed Lake Ontario’s name for the US:

Courtesy Google.com

AI Overview: Yes, Google Maps changed the label of Lake Ontario to “Lake America” for users in the United States, following a U.S. executive order and a name update by the U.S. Geographic Names Information System (GNIS).How the name appears depends on location and settings:

In the United States: The lake is labeled as “Lake America”.In Canada: The platform continues to display it as “Lake Ontario”.

Rest of the World: Users see both names, listed as “Lake Ontario (Lake America)”.

On Canadian Websites: Some Canadian services temporarily displayed “Lake America” because their embedded maps relied on U.S.-based Google Maps API servers, though Google noted website developers can fix this by explicitly setting their map region localization to Canada.

3)’Lake Ontario Now and Always’: Ford unveils new sign

Courtesy CBC, August 30, 2026

Ontario Premier Doug Ford unveiled a new ‘Lake Ontario’ sign Saturday in Winona, a small lakeside community on the outskirts of Hamilton.

This comes after U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order to change the name of the body of water to ‘Lake America.’

4)Blue Rodeo’s Greg Keelor says ‘Lake Ontario’ lyric now an anti-Trump rallying cry

Courtesy Barrie 360.com and Canadian Press

By Alex Nino Gheciu, August 31, 2026

Blue Rodeo’s Jim Cuddy and Greg Keelor perform at Massey Hall in Toronto

Greg Keelor had been mulling what to say about Donald Trump all night.

Blue Rodeo was about to play “Hasn’t Hit Me Yet” during their Saturday show at Toronto’s RBC Amphitheatre, and the Canadian band’s frontman knew their 1993 hit contained a newly loaded lyric: “Out in the middle of Lake Ontario.”

Keelor considered using the moment to tear into the U.S. president, who last week signed an executive order to rename the body of water “Lake America.”

“A part of me just wanted to go off on Trump and just call him a lot of bad names,” the singer-songwriter says in an interview Monday.

But he opted for a different approach.

“I knew that the song would do the work” he says. “I didn’t have to say much. Just getting to that line was going to blow the roof off the place.”

Turns out he was right.

When Blue Rodeo reached the song, Keelor asked the roughly 16,000 people in attendance to sing “Lake Ontario” with “full authority and ownership,” with the lake itself stretching out behind the waterfront venue.

They roared the line out.

A map of Lake Ontario appeared on the screens behind the band, a visual Keelor had specifically requested before the show.

The moment has since gone viral, drawing international attention as Trump pushes to put his own stamp on the Great Lake shared by Canada and the U.S.

For Keelor, the response was far more charged than he expected.

“We were all just a little shocked at the wave of emotion that came from the audience when they got to that line,” he says. “It has a different meaning now. I’m very happy for that.”

Keelor says Trump’s name change, which comes amid an escalating trade war between Canada and the U.S., is “insulting” and emblematic of what he sees as a broader pattern of behaviour from the president.

“He’s an ignorant man,” Keelor says. “He’s just a man-baby throwing his food off his tray when he doesn’t like it, pounding his fists on his feeding tray.”

He adds that Trump’s name change on one of the Great Lakes is “just another aspect of his idiocy” and “so un-Canadian.”

But he also sees something unifying in the controversy.

“We’re not pushovers. We dig in,” he says.

To Keelor, Lake Ontario has always meant something more than a name on a map.

He says he wrote the song after walking around Port Hope, Ont., where he felt a deep connection to the water and the surrounding landscape.

“It’s sort of a mystical experience of sharing the oneness of all things, in a way,” he says.

The lake, he notes, predates the countries and borders that now surround it by thousands of years.

“That’s a very powerful body of water,” Keelor says. “Most Canadians, it wasn’t really something in your brain, it was just Lake Ontario. But now it’s taken on a significance and it’s a bit of a line in the sand.”

Trump’s executive order has only added to that symbolism.

“The Indigenous people had a relationship with this lake thousands of years before any of us showed up,” Keelor says.

“It’s unbelievable that the American people would have put him in power. It’s a very depressing thing.”

Keelor says Blue Rodeo has largely stopped touring the U.S.

“Nobody has any appetite to go down there and play,” he says.

Google Maps now displays “Lake America” for users in the U.S., while Canadians continue to see Lake Ontario. International users see both names.

“That corporate complicity is a scary thing,” says Keelor.

“Maps are something we take for granted most of the time, but they’re important. Arbitrary lines that are cut across countries, they mean a lot.”

Blue Rodeo doesn’t hit the road again until October, but Keelor says the current political climate could create an opportunity for the band to do something smaller and more spontaneous.

“Maybe some smaller guerrilla sort of stuff,” he says.

For now, the veteran country rockers are getting used to their unexpected role helping Canadians rage against the American machine.

“We’re very happy to have that line in that song at this particular moment because it is a little bit of a rallying call,” he says.

“If the song galvanizes a mood or an energy in the country, that is amazing.”

5) (Update) Pentagon defends Hegseth’s controversial post about Canadian cadet program

Courtesy Barrie360.com and Canadian Press
By Kelly Geraldine Malone, September 1, 2026

The Pentagon is standing behind a controversial social media post by U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth about a Canadian cadet program as the Trump administration continues to denigrate Canada’s Armed Forces.

Hegseth on Monday posted an image from the Cadet Training Centre in Vernon, B.C., depicting two young women in uniform with the caption “this is real” alongside a Canadian flag.

The online response to Hegseth’s post was filled with remarks belittling the physical appearance of the cadets but it also triggered massive backlash from Canadians.
Some people posted that it was unfair for Hegseth to target the youth program in an attempt to disparage the Canadian Armed Forces and others criticized the U.S. defence secretary for body-shaming women serving in the cadet program. 

Asked about the backlash Tuesday, Pentagon deputy press secretary Jacob Bliss said, “The X post speaks for itself.”

Carney told reporters in Ottawa on Tuesday that comments from Trump administration officials maligning Canada’s military were “beneath their office.”

B.C. Premier David Eby said Hegseth’s post and the Pentagon’s defence of it were an embarrassment.
“It tells you everything you need to know about the amateur-hour, distracted, bizarre leadership that Americans are being subjected to,” Eby said.
He cited an ongoing military conference in Victoria, which includes U.S. representatives, as an example of the importance of co-operation during “unstable times.”

The post comes amid increased tensions between Canada and the United States after trade talks broke down last month. 

The Trump administration hit Canada with 50 per cent tariffs on an array of goods in August, with both countries blaming the other for adding last-minute changes during negotiations. 
Canada is set to implement its retaliatory duties next week.

Trump has spent the weeks since talks were frozen incessantly targeting Canada in his public remarks and social media posts. Last week, he signed an executive order to change the name of Lake Ontario to “Lake America” in his latest effort to agitate America’s northern neighbour.

Many in Trump’s team have turned their insults to Canada’s military. U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Monday told CNBC 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.

The week prior, U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy claimed on Fox News that Canada “doesn’t have a military.”

Conservative MP Garnett Genuis responded to Hegseth’s post on Monday saying “cadets do great work, and are not members of the military.” He added that “158 members of the Canadian military gave their lives in Afghanistan after your country was attacked.”
“Canada and the U.S. have a great history of fighting together for freedom and justice. It’s history worth remembering,” Genuis said. 

The Army Cadet League of Canada condemned the online harassment and mockery of cadets and their achievements.
“Directing derogatory commentary toward youth who are actively working to better themselves and serve their communities is unacceptable,” the league said about Hegseth’s remarks in a statement.
It said the league “stands firmly behind cadets, adult staff, volunteers, and officers who dedicate their time to building stronger communities and developing the next generation of Canadian leaders.”

The national, community-based cadet program is for youth aged 12 to 18. A federal government website says the program provides “opportunities for youth to gain valuable knowledge and skills that build confidence and help pave the way in a transition to adulthood.”
It’s not clear how exactly the cadet training program’s Instagram account — which had 1,821 followers as of Tuesday morning — came onto Hegseth’s radar. Bliss, who works in the office of the assistant to the secretary of war for public affairs, did not respond to questions about how the defence secretary became aware of it.

The post comes as Hegseth is facing immense pressure domestically from an unpopular and escalating war with Iran, the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, depleting stockpiles of munitions and the departure of top military figures during his tenure.
In the latest series of shakeups of military leadership, on Monday Army Secretary Dan Driscoll handed in his resignation following widely reported tensions with Hegseth. 
— With files from Chuck Chiang and Nono Shen in Vancouver and The Associated Press