The name change was the talk of the docks on both shores of Lake Ontario this week. But neither American nor Canadian sailors seemed to be taking it all that seriously.
“It’s a nonissue for us, other than watching the memes and enjoying the humor,” said Howie Colt, captain and founder of Gone Sailing Adventures, a charter sailing company in Toronto.
Colt plies the waters off the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario, which is the easternmost of five Great Lakes and the latest body of water to be rebranded by President Donald Trump. On Thursday, amid escalating tensions between the U.S. and Canada over Trump’s aggressive tariff policies, the president signed an executive order to rename Lake Ontario as Lake America.
“Canada has been ripping us off for a long time on trade, very sadly,” Trump said in signing the order, which recalled his decision last year to recast the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America.
Then, as now, the durability of the move seemed to be in some doubt.
“Nobody here will ever call it anything but Lake Ontario,” said Brent Bochek, captain and fishing guide at his charter company, Fish NV, in St. Catharines, Ontario, on the Canadian side near Niagara Falls.
“It’s going to be Lake Ontario until the day I die. In my mind, anyway,” said Joe Kyle, captain of Onacona Charters, on the U.S. side near Rochester, New York.
The charter fishing and yacht companies sailing the lake’s deep waters are among those most likely to be affected by the name change and its fallout, if any. Often staffed by boat captains who have been fishing or giving tours for decades, they rely on tourists from both the U.S. and Canada. And overall tourism between the countries has been a bit rocky of late.
Tourism from Canada into the U.S. took a nosedive last year after Trump began slapping tariffs on the close U.S. ally and talking about wanting to make Canada the 51st state. Travel by Canadians into the U.S. fell 25 percent in 2025, Canadian government data shows. It recovered slightly this summer, but remains far below 2024 levels.
So far, Trump’s “Lake America” order has not triggered mass cancellations, said Amra Durakovic, head of communications for Flight Centre Travel Group Canada, the local branch of the international travel agency. But Canadians are increasingly asking to avoid the United States, she said.
July bookings of Canadians traveling to the U.S. were up 5.7 percent compared to a dismal 2025, the company’s data shows, but they remain 39 percent below 2024 before Trump returned to the White House.
“It’s sort of showing that political sentiment is now part of the travel decision in a very interesting way,” Durakovic said.
At least one U.S. business is seeing an unexpected boost from hubbub. At Lake Ontario Press in Rochester, a small screen printing business, owner Matt Saxon said a couple hundred people have expressed interest in an event this weekend to print Lake Ontario designs on their T-shirts.
So far, no one has requested a Lake America design, he said.
Back on the water, Dan Farris, co-owner of Toronto Harbour Tours in that Canadian city, called the name change a “sad reflection” of the deteriorating relationship between the two countries. “It’s representative of a breakdown in a relationship that we take really seriously and really value,” Farris said.
Fortunately, he said, the official hostility so far has not seeped into the friendly interactions his tour guides have with tourists every day. Most view the Lake America thing as a joke, Farris said, adding that he expects his humorous guides to work it into their tour patter.
“It is what it is: it’s political,” agreed Nick Garbowski, captain and owner of Rochester Yacht Charters on the U.S. side of the border. Garbowski said he’s been getting a lot of feedback about it from dock employees, but doesn’t plan to change his advertising or how he refers to the lake unless “Lake America” really catches on.
“Nobody’s really taking it too seriously until we have a reason to,” Garbowski said.
Nearby, Dan DeGeorge, captain of Double D Sportfishing in Rochester, said he sees the name change as an opportunity. He has already launched an advertisement in red, white and blue encouraging people to come fish on Lake America.
Still, even DeGeorge doesn’t think the name will stick forever.
“Deep down inside,” he said, “this is always still going to be Lake Ontario.”
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