As Canadian officials reject U.S. President Donald Trump’s order renaming Lake Ontario as Lake America, Canada’s own database of official place names carries eight entries called Trump.
Only one thing in the country is actually named after the U.S. president, and it is not on that list. Ottawa Coun. Tim Tierney told CNN it is Trump Avenue, a residential street in the capital’s Central Park neighbourhood.
CNN reported that council voted unanimously Wednesday to take a first step toward renaming the street, a day before Trump signed the Lake Ontario order, which followed the same pattern as his renaming of the Gulf of Mexico. Tierney said the replacements floated so far run to Obama Avenue, Ontario Avenue, Canada Avenue, Canada Goose Avenue, Pelosi Avenue and Taco Avenue, which spells out Trump Always Chickens Out.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Mark Carney wrote on X that the name for Lake Ontario is more than 400 years old and comes from the Wendat word Ontari’io, meaning “the lake is beautiful, the lake is big.”
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre wrote on X that the lake “is and will always be Lake Ontario, and no executive order will change that.”
The Canadian Geographical Names Database, run by Natural Resources Canada and fed by federal, provincial and territorial naming authorities, still carries the lake as Lake Ontario, along with eight “Trump” entries. There is not enough information available on the origin of the “Trump” entries.
Four of them sit off Newfoundland’s north coast in Notre Dame Bay, near Twillingate. Two are islands, North Trump Island and South Trump Island, about two kilometres apart. A third entry covers a group called the Trump Islands and a fourth carries that same name for a settlement.
Ontario holds the other four, in two clusters about 180 kilometres apart. Trump Lake and Trump Creek lie roughly 54 kilometres from Chapleau. East and West Trump Lake sit about 32 kilometres from Kapuskasing.
However, while the register records the date a naming authority last decided on each place, it mentions nothing about origin. Every Trump entry on it is filed with its language of origin listed as undetermined, a designation entered by the provincial authorities that own the names.
The most recent decision on any Trump entry in Canada was made in 1973, on East and West Trump Lake. The four Newfoundland entries date to January 1954, and Trump Lake and Trump Creek to that October.
Two more entries sit on the register as formerly official, meaning the name stays on record but is no longer recognized. Lac Trump lies in Pontiac County in western Quebec, about 49 kilometres from Maniwaki. Trump, Man., is about five kilometres from the town of Morris, south of Winnipeg.
Streets are not in the register, but Natural Resources Canada’s Geolocation Service returns two Trump streets in the country, roughly 2,850 kilometres apart. Trump Avenue runs through Ottawa’s Central Park neighbourhood off Merivale Road, while Trump Place is a cul-de-sac off Timothy Drive in the Timberlands neighbourhood of Red Deer, Alta.
How Trump Avenue got its name has never been documented. National Post columnist Colby Cosh wrote Friday that the developers who built Central Park in the 1990s named the street directly after Trump, then a New York real estate figure, for marketing reasons. AFP reported in 2021 that the neighbourhood was built on a New York theme, alongside a Madison Park, a Manhattan Crescent and a Staten Way.
A 2021 consultation asking the street’s 62 households whether they wanted the name changed split 21 in favour and 21 opposed, with 20 not voting. Tierney said the Lake Ontario dispute has put a renaming back on the front burner.
He said the focus belongs on trade and tariffs rather than names. “Stop with the lame name game and let’s get back to the table,” he said.
Both of Canada’s Trump-branded towers have dropped the name. The Globe and Mail reported in 2017 that the Toronto building’s owner had bought out the Trump Organization’s management contracts, five years after it opened. The Vancouver tower opened in 2017, closed in 2020 and had its signage taken down the year after, Global News reported.
Trump Lake , the one near Chapleau, has a Google Maps listing with five reviews and a rating of 2.4 stars.
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