A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
Ontario Premier Doug Ford is pushing back against a White House order to call Lake Ontario Lake America.
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DOUG FORD: President Trump can call it whatever he wants, but I can tell you that the rest of the world will always call it Lake Ontario.
MARTÍNEZ: The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation carried his response. People on the U.S. side of the border also reacted. Here's North Country Public Radio's Richard Haller.
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RICHARD HALLER, BYLINE: It's a beautiful summer day as I walk along New York state's northern shore of Lake Ontario. Now it's Lake America, even on Google Maps in the U.S. Veem Dehal (ph) sits on a rock at the edge of the lake, soaking up the sun while he watches his kid play in the waves. He heard about Trump's executive order.
VEEM DEHAL: (Laughter) That's funny. You can't change the name of everything. It's been like this forever.
HALLER: Dehal is a nurse from Syracuse and says he works with a lot of Canadians.
DEHAL: And we were all laughing last night. People will not call Lake America anyway. We'll still call Lake Ontario.
HALLER: Most of the people I spoke with said they will continue to call it Lake Ontario. Tyler Dellina, a Republican just up the coast at a marina in Henderson Harbor, says he doesn't think changing the name is necessary. But he doesn't care if it offends people.
TYLER DELLINA: Things change all the time. Road names get new names. Towns get new names. At the end of the day, it is what it is. If you don't like it, change it. Go out and vote. If you do like it, vote again.
HALLER: For the past year and a half, President Trump has targeted Canada in a trade war, now with new 50% levies. There were tense trade negotiations to try and avoid them, but Canada left the table. Trump then lashed back with the name change. Working outside on the docks, Kara Rousseau says she gets why Trump put new tariffs in place. But as someone who's grown up working on this harbor for 40 years, changing the name is not OK with her.
KARA ROUSSEAU: It will always and forever be Lake Ontario. And I think he does it for himself and the attention because he's narcissistic and arrogant, and he doesn't think of what us as Americans actually feel.
HALLER: Kathleen Kohanski spends every summer working behind the register at a general store on the marina. She says that changing the name deeply offends her.
KATHLEEN KOHANSKI: Lake Ontario - it belongs to everybody, from fish to people to birds to wildlife. I answer the phone - Henchens Marina, Lake Ontario - because that's what we are.
HALLER: Kohanski says that she'll forever share the name with her Canadian neighbors across the lake.
For NPR News, I'm Richard Haller in Henderson, New York.
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