Bryan Adams has a new song about Lake Ontario, and he’s not a fan of what Washington wants to call it.
The Canadian rocker released “Lake Ontario” on Wednesday, Oct. 28. It takes aim at Donald Trump’s order to rename the Great Lake “Lake America,” calling the whole thing a “real dog and pony show.”
The song goes further than defending a name. Adams brings up the war in Iran and the Jeffrey Epstein files, suggesting the renaming is a distraction from both.
He never says Trump’s name. He doesn’t need to.
“Empires and regimes, dictators and kings, they all come and go. Lake Ontario is forever,” Adams said in a statement.
He called it “a song for all the sane people on both shores who know that the current madness will pass, and that Lake Ontario will always be Lake Ontario.”
What the song says
The song starts long before anyone in Washington got involved.
Adams traces the lake from the glaciers that carved it to the Indigenous peoples who cared for it, then to the European explorers and the industry that grew up along its shores. He calls it the “lake of shining waters” and makes the point that its name didn’t come from “an executive order.”
That line has history behind it. According to Canadian Heritage, “Ontario” comes from the Iroquois word kanadario, meaning “sparkling” water. The province took its name from the lake, not the other way around.
Then the song turns. Adams describes “one dude” who breaks a long peace between the people living on both sides of the water. He suggests the renaming fight was cooked up to pull attention away from Iran and the Epstein files.
That’s Adams’s argument, not a proven explanation for why the White House did it.
In the video, Adams sits in a small boat out on the lake.
Why Trump renamed Lake Ontario “Lake America”
Trump signed Executive Order 14422 on Aug. 27.
The order says the United States protects the Great Lakes and pays for much of their upkeep. It points to the U.S. Coast Guard running most of the icebreaking fleet that keeps the lakes open to shipping, and to the nearly $4 billion the U.S. has spent on the Great Lakes ecosystem over the past decade.
It gave the U.S. Interior Department 30 days to make the change. It also told the federal Board on Geographic Names to make sure American maps, contracts and documents use “Lake America.”
It followed Trump’s earlier move to rename the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America.”
The order only applies to the U.S. government. Canada still officially calls it Lake Ontario.
The song lands in the middle of a trade war
The renaming didn’t happen in a vacuum, and neither did the song.
Eight days before the order, on Aug. 19, Trump’s 50 per cent tariffs kicked in on a wide range of Canadian goods, from wine to hockey sticks to cement. Three days later, Canada walked away from trade talks.
“In short, they asked too much, and they offered too little,” Carney said at the time.
Since then, Canada has come up again and again on the U.S. campaign trail.
On Sept. 30, Trump said Canada was being “taught a little lesson.” Around the same time, a poll found just 26 per cent of Americans still considered Canada a close ally.
On Oct. 19, Trump told a Kansas rally that Canada could keep hockey and O Canada if it became the 51st state. That’s the same idea Adams went after in his Canada Day song.
Adams’s song came out three days later. That same Wednesday, Prime Minister Mark Carney said Canada isn’t ready to sign a deal.
“We’re not at that position right now,” he said. His comments came hours after a report that U.S. Ambassador Pete Hoekstra had privately warned that Canada could be blamed if Republicans lose next week’s midterms.
Blue Rodeo got there first
Adams isn’t the first Canadian musician to push back.
Two days after the order, on Aug. 29, Blue Rodeo played Toronto’s RBC Amphitheatre. When the band hit the Lake Ontario line in its 1993 song “Hasn’t Hit Me Yet,” thousands of fans sang it back. Video of the moment spread across the country.
Singer Greg Keelor said he’d thought about what to say before the show.
“A part of me just wanted to go off on Trump and just call him a lot of bad names,” he said. He let the crowd do the talking instead.
The “Lake America” story that wouldn’t quit
The renaming has led to some strange moments.
In September, a photo spread across Canada that seemed to show four Americans flying to Halifax in matching “Lake America” sweatshirts. The sweatshirts weren’t real. The photo had been altered with ChatGPT.
Read more: Group of Americans Apparently Travelled to Halifax in Matching “Lake America” Sweatshirts
The woman who made it turned out to be the CEO of a small Michigan credit union. She apologized and said her family got death threats. Less than two weeks later, she was out of a job.
Read more: CEO Behind Viral AI “Lake America” Photo Is Out at Michigan Credit Union
A whole album about Canada
“Lake Ontario” is a digital bonus track on Adams’s new album, How’s It Goin’, out Nov. 6 on his own label, BAD Records. It isn’t on the 12-song CD and vinyl editions.
Adams calls the record a musical love letter to Canada. It started with a song he wrote for the documentary Canada’s Wild Eastern Edge.
“The idea was simply to make a record about Canada,” he said.
The track list covers a lot of ground:
“Highway 16”
“The Battle of Lundy’s Lane,” about the War of 1812 battle near Niagara Falls
“The Ballad of Terry Fox”
“When Canada Joined Newfoundland”
“Iron Ribbon”
“51st State”
Albertans know Highway 16 as the Yellowhead, which runs through Jasper and Edmonton. Adams hasn’t said which stretch the song is about.
Not his first shot at Trump
On Canada Day, Adams released “51st State,” his answer to Trump’s talk of making Canada part of the United States. Like “Lake Ontario,” it never names Trump. Adams has said American crowds gave it standing ovations when he played it on tour.
“Lake Ontario” is sharper. “51st State” was about standing up for Canada. This one asks why the fight is happening at all.
Not everyone’s on board. Some listeners online panned the song, and others told Adams to stay out of politics. Adams, 66, was born in Kingston, Ont., and grew up mostly in Ottawa. He’s never been one to keep quiet: he spent years publicly fighting Canada’s CanCon rules after his biggest hit was ruled not Canadian enough.
His point this time is simple. Whatever Washington calls it, the lake keeps its name.
“Lake Ontario” is out now. How’s It Goin’ arrives Nov. 6.
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