Maps showing the names Lake America (top), viewable only to U.S.-based users and Lake Ontario (bottom), viewable only to Canada-based viewers, that appear on Google Maps on Sunday.Google Maps/Reuters
Welcome to the map resistance.
On the same day that U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order last week renaming Lake Ontario to Lake America, MapQuest – yes, that MapQuest, whose sheafs of printed directions guided so many early-2000s road trips – posted a simple, blunt message: “We’re not changing it.”
And with that, the mapping company you didn’t even know was still in business became a mascot of the resistance to the President’s penchant for renaming geographical features in the manner of a dog raising his hind leg next to a fire hydrant.
Doug Berger, general manager of MapQuest, points out that their cheeky rebellion actually started with the Gulf of Mexico rebrand last year.
“I wouldn’t call it a stance, I would call it a well-timed joke,” he said in an interview, adding that the wildly enthusiastic response suggests the company made the right call. “It’s made us realize, political stance or not, it’s what people want. People clearly want to hang onto the names of bodies of water that they recognize.”
Google Maps changes ‘Lake Ontario’ to ‘Lake America’ in U.S.
Mr. Berger said the app had welcomed “hundreds of thousands of new users” over the weekend, and he noted that it had become the second-most popular navigation app in Apple’s App Store.
Two hours after we spoke, MapQuest leapfrogged Google Maps to take the No. 1 spot.
MapQuest’s original joke was that they weren’t changing the geographic names because they didn’t know how to update their maps, Mr. Berger said, a riff on the public’s perception that no one works there any more. They’re well aware of the punchlines, he said, but in fact the U.S.-based company currently has 50 employees, and 40 million people use the app every month.
MapQuest’s parent company, System1, has an office in Guelph, Ont., which perhaps explains some of the sly, rebellious Canadian humour at play here.
“We’re just thrilled to be a part of the conversation and provide an alternate solution to those apps that are pre-installed on people’s phones,” Mr. Berger said. He pointed out that even all the jokes about people being shocked to discover that MapQuest still exists point to its place in people’s memories.
The company also created a rudimentary web tool that allows users to rename some of the landmarks Mr. Trump has tried to claim as his own. You could, for instance, conjure yourself a map featuring the Gulf of AreYouEffingKiddingMe or Lake Tiny Hands – really, whatever feels most meaningful to your own resistance effort.
“There’s already a kind of precedent of geopolitical names for places around the world, and depending on where you are in the world, what country you’re in, you may see different names for different places,” said Mr. Berger. “MapQuest being predominantly in the U.S. and Canada, we kind of think it’s crazy that there’s discourse over what to call things, and that’s part of why we feel like we’re a voice for this moment.”
Ford unveils Lake Ontario sign days after Trump’s Lake America order
Over the weekend, social media was filled with people declaring they would install MapQuest and jettison Google Maps, after the tech giant announced on Saturday that it had switched to Lake America on its own maps. Google said it did so to match the U.S.’s Geographic Names Information System, citing a company policy to align with official government sources.
“People using Maps in the U.S. will see ‘Lake America,’ those in Canada will continue to see ‘Lake Ontario,’ and those outside of the U.S. and Canada will see both names,” Google said, in a blog post accompanied by a graphic showing the body of water labelled as “Lake Ontario (Lake America)” for international users.
A globe commissioned by the Royal Canadian Geographical Society ignores Mr. Trump’s edicts and overtly differentiates Canada from the U.S. in imperial pink.James Park/The Globe and Mail
The Royal Canadian Geographical Society, on the other hand, sailed in to wave the rebel flag. Rosemary Thompson, senior vice-president external, wrote in Policy magazine that as far as her organization is concerned, “Lake Ontario is still Lake Ontario.”
She highlighted the RCGS’s Canada Globe, a custom-made, 127-centimetre diameter beach ball of resistance that has “defiantly protected names and places recently expunged by the Trumpian lexicon of geography,” ever since it was unveiled in the society’s headquarters overlooking the Ottawa River last year.
On that globe, the Gulf of Mexico is itself, Alaska’s Denali remains Denali and not Mount McKinley, and Canada is painted “imperial pink” to differentiate it from the United States and underscore its connections to the United Kingdom and Commonwealth. Lake Ontario, of course, remains unchanged.
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“In February 2025, in snowy Ottawa, as our team took note of these geographical pronouncements, we decided that names matter, that sovereignty matters,” Ms. Thompson wrote of Mr. Trump’s earlier rebrands. She added that the globe was intended to “reflect our love of country and be a symbol of resistance in a world of high-octane rhetoric.”
Like most Canadians, Ms. Thompson brings her own history and proximity to the current behaviour of the U.S. administration. She covered Canada-U.S. relations for CTV for decades, and was at the White House on 9/11 as the network’s Washington correspondent.
That was, of course, the day that Canadians in Gander, Nfld., opened their homes and their arms to thousands of scared and stranded Americans.
“The Great Lakes don’t need anyone to tell them to be great again,” Ms. Thompson wrote over the weekend about the latest geographic aggression from the Oval Office. “No ego-boosting is required; we all know they are great.”
This is the map resistance. Please collect your compass, your pens and your parchment. We ride at dawn.
Editor’s note: This article has been updated to correct the spelling of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society and the surname of its senior vice-president, Rosemary Thompson.