Shortly after the president signed an order declaring the name change, Carney took to X to explain why the newly renamed body of water would still be known as Lake Ontario “today and forever.”
In the posts, which were also in French, Carney noted that the lake’s name is more than 400 years old, predating both the Confederation of Canada and the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America.
“The name Lake Ontario comes from the Wendat word Ontari’io, which, appropriately, means ‘the lake is beautiful, the lake is big,’” he wrote in his post.
“We know that America is changing. Their trading relationships, their foreign policies, their national monuments, their hydronyms,” he continued.
But just because America might attempt to change the lake’s name, Carney closed out the post insisting that “Canadian women and men also know that things must be called by their name, and this lake is called Lake Ontario – today and forever.”
To almost no one’s surprise, Carney’s retort was widely hailed.
However, some people focused their attention on one particular word.