TORONTO — U.S. President Donald Trump recirculated a Just the News item late Wednesday showing the National Weather Service has begun rewriting Lake Ontario as “Lake America” on maps and marine forecasts — three days after the agency posted the notice, and three weeks after he signed the order that started it.On Sept. 14 the NWS said it is implementing Executive Order 14422 — “Honoring the American History of the Great Lakes and Renaming Lake Ontario as Lake America” — on online maps, weather products, websites and other materials, “as quickly as possible,” while trying not to disrupt operations. Buffalo’s office still used “Lake Ontario” in a forecast discussion as late as Sept. 13.Trump signed the order Aug. 27, after trade talks with Ottawa collapsed, and gave the Department of the Interior and the U.S. Board on Geographic Names 30 days to make the federal name official.The order binds U.S. agencies. It does not bind Canada, Ontario, New York, or private firms, and it does not move the international boundary. Prime Minister Mark Carney has already said the name is more than 400 years old and comes from the Wendat Ontari’io — “the lake is beautiful, the lake is big.”Google Maps and Apple Maps now show Lake America to users in the United States, Lake Ontario to users in Canada, and both names elsewhere. MapQuest refused to change.
