Lake Ontario, the vast body of water that straddles the US-Canada border, has gone by many names over the centuries: Lac Saint-Louis, Lacus Ontarius, Skaniadorio, Cataraqui Lake. But one thing it will never be called, says the Canadian rock star Bryan Adams, is Lake America.
In his new song Lake Ontario, Adams takes aim at the US president, Donald Trump, accusing him of “breaking the peace” between the people who live on the lake’s shores.
Trump signed an executive order in August directing US federal agencies to rename Lake Ontario “Lake America”, echoing his earlier, widely mocked decision to rename the Gulf of Mexico “the Gulf of America”.
The move further escalated a feud with Canada that has strained the longstanding alliance between the two countries. Trump’s decision has largely been met with derision in Canada, with some pointing out that the province of Ontario is named after the lake, not the other way around. Adams’s lyrics emphasise the roots of the name:
The ‘lake of shining waters’ is what the Iroquois called her
It’s a First Nations name – not an executive order.
Adams’s lyrics also suggest that Trump’s naming stunt was intended to deflect from the president’s other political problems, including the war in Iran and renewed scrutiny of the Jeffrey Epstein files.
But things weren’t going his way in Iran
So like a baby tossing the toys from the pram
But it feels like another distraction
While the Epstein files were getting traction
The song is part of what Adams described in a recent interview as a broader “love letter” to Canada: a songwriting project that began with an invitation from a film company to write about the Maritimes provinces of Canada and has since morphed into the upcoming album How’s It Goin’.
“After finishing the first song, I moved on to that one, and then moved on to another one, and then started thinking maybe I should just carry on with my theme,” he said.
As well as homages to Canadian heroes, the album also includes ۵۱st State, released on ۱ July – Canada Day – as another repudiation of Trump, in this case his efforts to annex Canada.
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You can push us to the brink
But where the open road divides
You’ll find a wall of maple
With us on the other side.
The first time he played the song in public was in the US.
“We weren’t sure how people were going to respond to it,” he said. “But we got a standing ovation every night for it. It made me think: perhaps, finally, the tide’s turning.”
