FRIDAY: Should Lake Ontario's name be changed?

FRIDAY, MARCH 7, 2025

War on the northern frontier: Way back in 1994, The Madness of King George was a well-received major film.

Then too, there's the possible madness that's floating around concerning some of our lakes and rivers, but also concerning our northern border and our onrushing war with Canada.

We refer you to a breaking news report in the New York Times.  That report appears beneath this dual headline—and no, we aren't making this up:

How Trump’s ‘51st State’ Canada Talk Came to Be Seen as Deadly Serious
President Trump, in an early February call, challenged the border treaty between the two countries and told Justin Trudeau he didn’t like their shared water agreements.

Say what? President Trump "challenged the border treaty between" the U.S. and Canada? The president also said that he doesn't like the two countries' "shared water agreements?"

We don't know if those claims are accurate, but as the Times report continues, it describes the contents of some February telephone calls between the two nations' leaders:

How Trump’s ‘51st State’ Canada Talk Came to Be Seen as Deadly Serious

[...]

On those calls, President Trump laid out a long list of grievances he had with the trade relationship between the two countries, including Canada’s protected dairy sector, the difficulty American banks face in doing business in Canada and Canadian consumption taxes that Mr. Trump deems unfair because they make American goods more expensive.

He also brought up something much more fundamental.

He told Mr. Trudeau that he did not believe that the treaty that demarcates the border between the two countries was valid and that he wants to revise the boundary. He offered no further explanation.

The border treaty Mr. Trump referred to was established in 1908 and finalized the international boundary between Canada, then a British dominion, and the United States.

Mr. Trump also mentioned revisiting the sharing of lakes and rivers between the two nations, which is regulated by a number of treaties, a topic he’s expressed interest about in the past.

The northern border was established in 1908. According to this news report, a certain major political figure is interested in changing it.

We don't know if that statement is accurate. But here's a bit more from the Times report concerning those rivers and lakes, and other topics besides. At this fork in the road, Howard Lutnick swims into view:

While Mr. Trump’s remarks could all be bluster or a negotiating tactic to pressure Canada into concessions on trade or border security, the Canadian side no longer believes that to be so.

And the realization that the Trump administration was taking a closer and more aggressive look at the relationship, one that tracked with those threats of annexation, sank in during subsequent calls between top Trump officials and Canadian counterparts.

One such call was between Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick...and Canada’s finance minister, Dominic LeBlanc. The two men had been communicating regularly since they had met at Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s home and club in Florida, during Mr. Trudeau’s visit there in early December.

Mr. Lutnick called Mr. LeBlanc after the leaders had spoken on Feb. 3, and issued a devastating message, according to several people familiar with the call: Mr. Trump, he said, had come to realize that the relationship between the United States and Canada was governed by a slew of agreements and treaties that were easy to abandon.

Mr. Trump was interested in doing just that, Mr. Lutnick said.

He wanted to eject Canada out of an intelligence-sharing group known as the Five Eyes that also includes Britain, Australia and New Zealand.

He wanted to tear up the Great Lakes agreements and conventions between the two nations that lay out how they share and manage Lakes Superior, Huron, Erie and Ontario.

And he is also reviewing military cooperation between the two countries, particularly the North American Aerospace Defense Command.

If Secretary Lutnick actually said those things, that could have been bluster too! That said, we've drawn at least one strong conclusion:

At the very least, it's long past time to think about changing the name of Lake Ontario, which Americans find highly offensive.

Beyond that, this report has made us think of that 1994 film! Is someone sunk in a type of madness in this alleged state of affairs? Assuming that it isn't Trudeau, will American journalists ever look for a way to use their words to contemplate some such possible state of affairs?

Could something be "wrong" with one of these pols? No really—is it possible that something is actually wrong?

In our view, that would of course be a tragic state of affairs. Inevitably, someone will say that our press corps' ongoing silence could conceivably be thought of as a type of "madness" too!

It's time to change the northern border! Canada out of Five Eyes!