‘Lake Ontario’ hat maker sees politics and sales in Trump’s name change

Ontario Premier Doug Ford wears a 'Canada is not for sale' hat to meetings with the country's premiers in Ottawa. Photo by Adam Huras/Brunswick News

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Mere hours before U.S. President Donald Trump signed an order to change Lake Ontario’s name on U.S. maps, a husband-and-wife team in Canada’s capital city began marketing a blue hat with its name.

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If retail is detail, the timing for Liam Mooney and Emma Cochrane was nearly perfect. Their firm, Ottawa-based Jackpine, took about 100 orders for “Lake Ontario” caps shortly after launching the product online in response to Trump’s threats to rename the body of water “Lake America.”

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Jackpine is preparing to sell thousands more — expecting a sharp public reaction now that Trump has signed a directive to rename the Great Lake that separates Ontario and New York.

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“Canada has been ripping us off for a long time on trade,” Trump told reporters when asked what message he was sending to the U.S.’s northern neighbour. “They want to be treated like they’re a state, and so we just can’t do that anymore.”

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Trump’s idea to rename the lake was part of a public feud with Ontario Premier Doug Ford. Each leader insulted the other in media appearances and on social media this week after trade talks between the U.S. and Canada collapsed.

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Mooney called the lake renaming “absurd,” but also saw the more serious implications. “It’s this sort of annexation rhetoric made real,” he said. “There’s a realpolitik to this thing.”

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Jackpine will ship the first Lake Ontario hats within two weeks to buyers in both countries, including people in upstate New York, Illinois and border communities.

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Their online apparel store became a sensation in Canada after Trump won the 2024 election and began musing about turning the northern country into the 51st state. Jackpine designed “Canada is not for sale” hats, which imitate the look of Make America Great Again headgear, except on a blue background.

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Demand spiked after Ford wore a “Canada is not for sale” hat to a Canadian political conference. The company sold 50,000 of them, according to Mooney.

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The name Lake Ontario is more than 400 years old, “predating both the Confederation of Canada and the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America,” Prime Minister Mark Carney said in a post on X. “We know that America is changing. Their trading relationships, their foreign policies, their national monuments, their hydronyms. Canadians also know that naming reality means calling it Lake Ontario – then, now and always.”

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