A longstanding rule aboard Leandro DaSilva’s charter boats in Rochester, New York, has always been simple: leave politics on the shore. Six years after founding his company, the 49-year-old captain is now confronting a political storm he never expected — one blowing in directly from the White House.
U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order last week directing that Lake Ontario be renamed “Lake America,” a move that has ignited fury on both sides of the border. For DaSilva, whose Ontario Boat Charters take visitors across the waters he has navigated since boyhood, the order threatens to drag the very thing that gives his livelihood meaning into divisive territory.
“Any time you bring politics into anything, it’s going to divide people, and this new name will divide people more,” he said.
A Lake Straddling Two Nations
Lake Ontario, which has carried the same name for nearly four centuries, forms part of the border between Canada and the United States. Canadians swiftly denounced the renaming as an affront to Indigenous heritage and an unwelcome injection of American nationalism. But the backlash has been equally fierce in Rochester, a city located roughly 150 kilometres southeast of Toronto whose identity is interwoven with the lake.
On Friday, the Rochester city council issued a proclamation vowing to maintain the name “Lake Ontario” and reject the President’s directive. Councillors labelled the move a “stunt” — a distraction from the pressing concerns facing American families, from housing affordability to economic uncertainty.
“To ‘change’ the identity of this lake, after centuries of being known by a single name, is as childish as it is futile,” the proclamation read.
White House spokesperson Allison Schuster defended the order, telling reporters the lake’s new name reflects its heritage and standing. “As the president said, the majority of the great lake’s volume sits in United States territory,” she said in an email.
Rochester Stands Its Ground
Council president Miguel A. Meléndez Jr., who spearheaded the proclamation, argued that the name “Lake America” disrespects the communities — both Indigenous and settler — who have long understood the waterway. The name “Ontario” derives from an Iroquois word meaning “beautiful lake” or “sparkling water.” French explorers once labelled it Lac Frontenac, but the Iroquois-rooted name prevailed on maps and in common usage.
Meléndez said the council felt compelled to act because the lake sustains livelihoods on both sides of the border and because Canada remains Rochester’s closest neighbour.
“It’s something we shouldn’t be picking fights over at this point, and it was important for us to stand up and say something,” he said in a Monday interview.
Although he acknowledged the Canada-U.S. relationship will require mending, Meléndez expressed hope that the bond forged across the water would endure beyond any one presidency. On its website, the city affectionately refers to Lake Ontario as the “sweetwater sea.”
A History of Cross-Border Connection
Rochester and Toronto were once linked by a passenger ferry that traversed Lake Ontario — a route first proposed in 1979 and finally launched in May 2004 after the city purchased a vessel for US$32-million. Within a month of operations commencing, two Globe and Mail reporters raced to determine whether the water route or the road was quicker; the driver won convincingly. Yet the service haemorrhaged US$10-million in its first ten months and was shuttered in 2006.
William Keeler, a librarian and archivist with the Rochester Historical Society, said the brief ferry experiment symbolised the goodwill that once defined the cross-border relationship. Its demise, he added, coincided with Rochester’s pivot away from the lake toward the nearly 200-year-old Erie Canal for trade.
Keeler did not mince words about the executive order. “Trump is trying to add one more thing to his legacy,” he said. “The guy is an egomaniac.”
He noted that the name “Ontario” has become shorthand for the wider region. The town of Ontario, New York, sits roughly 30 kilometres east of Rochester, while beaches, hiking paths and commercial enterprises throughout the area carry the lake’s name.
Merchandise Becomes a Form of Protest
When Matt Saxon, owner of Rochester-based screen-printing outfit Lake Ontario Press, first learned of the executive order, he joked with customers that his branding might need a rethink. Within hours, his inbox flooded with requests for Lake Ontario-branded apparel — a grassroots protest against the renaming.
By Saturday, he had organised a pop-up printing event. Customers queued an hour before doors opened, and Saxon personally produced at least 300 shirts — one of the strongest single days the company has ever recorded.
“So many people wanted it,” he said. “There was no way I couldn’t do it. I was going to do something, but I didn’t think I’d be doing it that quickly.”
Saxon is already planning a follow-up event as demand continues to swell, fuelled in part by the renaming beginning to surface on digital platforms. Google updated its maps service on Saturday to display “Lake America” for U.S. users, while Canadian viewers continue to see “Lake Ontario.” Users elsewhere see both names. The tech giant attributed the change to its long-standing policy of reflecting names that vary between countries.
On Monday, Trump publicly called on Apple to follow suit and rename the body of water on its maps application.
For DaSilva, however, the matter remains firmly settled. He intends to keep referring to the lake by its centuries-old name. Yet he frets that operating under a company title that may no longer align with how some Americans perceive the water could complicate his business — a complication, he noted, that no captain should have to navigate.
“This is something I have to think about, and I don’t want to spend my energy to change things,” DaSilva said. “Now, it’s really just a waste of time.”
Why it Matters
Beyond the symbolism, the dispute strikes at the economic and cultural ties that bind communities across the Great Lakes. Rochester’s defiance, coupled with the entrepreneurial surge in Lake Ontario merchandise, demonstrates how a presidential directive can galvanise grassroots opposition — and how a name change intended to project American identity has instead illuminated the enduring cross-border kinship that no executive order can rewrite.
