Submitted by the undersigned peoples of Canada, and of the wider world, in a spirit of geographical precision and international goodwill.

Effective immediately. Expires 20 January 2029, with the term of its current officeholder.

In short: Lake Ontario was not named after the Province of Ontario. The province was named after the lake. "Ontario" is a Wyandot word — Ontarí:io, meaning "great lake" — first recorded in 1641, two centuries before the province existed.

So August 27th's executive order did not rename a lake to spite a province. It deleted an Indigenous word meaning "great lake" from a great lake, to punish a country that didn't name it, on the legal theory that the United States owns the deep part.

We propose a renaming of our own. It is offered in the same spirit, and with considerably better research.

PREAMBLE

WHEREAS on the 20th day of January, 2025, the Gulf of Mexico — a body of water named for a sovereign nation of some 130 million people, and known by that name since roughly the sixteenth century — was declared, by the stroke of a single pen, to be the "Gulf of America"; and

WHEREAS the Department of the Interior complied, and Google complied, and Apple complied, and the rest of the planet did not; and

WHEREAS on this day, the 27th of August, 2026, Lake Ontario was likewise declared to be "Lake America," on the stated grounds that the deepest portions of the lake lie within United States territory and that the United States therefore claims the greater share of the lake's volume; and

WHEREAS this establishes, for the first time in the history of cartography, the doctrine of Sovereignty by Cubic Metre, under which a nation may claim any body of water in which it is able to stand on the bottom and not touch; and

WHEREAS the President, within approximately sixty seconds of signing an order renaming the lake "Lake America," referred to it aloud as the "Lake of America," thereby misnaming his own renaming in real time, before witnesses, on camera; and

WHEREAS he further mused that "all we need is an ocean," and that the Atlantic and/or the Pacific may be next, raising the prospect of a planet on which every body of water is called America and no one can give directions;

ON THE MATTER OF THE NAME "ONTARIO"

WHEREAS the renaming of Lake Ontario appears to rest upon the assumption that the lake was named after the Province of Ontario, and that removing the name therefore strikes a blow against Canada; and

WHEREAS this is precisely, comprehensively, and gloriously backwards; and

WHEREAS "Ontario" is a term of Indigenous origin — thought to derive either from Ontarí:io, a Huron (Wyandot) word meaning "great lake," or possibly from skanadario, meaning "beautiful water" or "sparkling water" in the Iroquoian languages; and

WHEREAS the first recorded use of "Ontario" dates to 1641, when it described the land on the north shore of the easternmost of the Great Lakes — that is to say, the land was named for the water, and the province was named for the lake, and the lake was named by people who were here first and who called it great; and

WHEREAS the Province of Ontario would not exist under that name for another two hundred and twenty-six years; and

WHEREAS the President has therefore not renamed a lake after a province, but has stripped a Wyandot word meaning "great lake" from a great lake, in order to punish a province that did not name it, on behalf of a country that did not find it, using an argument about depth; and

WHEREAS one could hardly design a more efficient demonstration of not knowing what one is talking about if one were being paid by the error;

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED
That the undersigned hereby declare that the office presently styled President of the United States of America shall henceforth, and until the 20th day of January, 2029, be known in all correspondence, broadcast, print, casual conversation, and polite society as:

THE GAPE OF AMERICA
And that the holder of the office shall be correctly addressed as The Gape, or in formal settings, His Gapeness.

ON THE APTNESS OF THE NAME

Unlike "Ontario," the name "Gape" has been selected with rigorous attention to etymology, and we submit it for the record:

• gape (n.) — a wide opening; a yawning chasm; a breach through which things are lost.
• gape (v.) — to stare open-mouthed, in stupefaction, without comprehension.
• the gapes (n., veterinary) — a disease of poultry characterised by persistent open-mouthed gasping.

We note with satisfaction that all three senses apply simultaneously, and that no Indigenous language was harmed in the construction of this name. It describes what it labels. It is, in the strictest cartographic sense, accurate — which is more than can be said for the alternative currently being stencilled onto the Great Lakes.

We further note that the Gape, unlike Lake Ontario, genuinely is deepest in the middle.

PROVISIONS

1. On volume. Should the doctrine of Sovereignty by Cubic Metre be applied consistently, Canada wishes to note that it is prepared to claim any airspace containing a sufficient quantity of hot air, and to file the necessary papers, documents, everything else.
2. On the lake itself. Lake Ontario has declined to comment, and continues to be great, beautiful, and sparkling under every name it has ever been given, including the ones it was given first. It is not going anywhere. Neither are we — we have long memories and longer winters, and very little else to do in February.
3. On expiry. This designation expires at noon on 20 January 2029, concurrent with the term of its current officeholder, or upon restoration of the name Lake Ontario, whichever comes first. We are reasonable people. We are Canadian.
4. On renewal. Provided, however, that should the office pass on that date to Mr. J.D. Vance, the designation renews automatically for a further four years. No action is required on the part of the subscriber. The name attaches to the office as it is being conducted, not to the man conducting it, and lapses the moment the office stops answering to it.
    

AN INVITATION TO ALL NATIONS

While this petition calls first upon Canadians, it is not a Canadian petition. It is offered to the world.

Signatures are warmly welcomed from Mexico, whose gulf went first and who have borne it with more grace than we are currently managing. From Denmark and Greenland. From Panama. From every nation that has ever opened an atlas and found itself edited.

And signatures are welcomed most of all from the citizens of the United States themselves, to whom we extend our genuine sympathy. It is one thing to live beside a gape. It is quite another to live directly beneath one, with all the risks that this entails — the pressure, the venting, the daily discharge, the sheer volume of it, and the plume that drifts north on the prevailing winds and settles on everything we own. We are merely downwind. You are underneath. You did not name it either. You have our solidarity, and, should you need it, our couch.

SIGN BELOW

Name, and the name of the nearest body of water, whatever you personally call it.

This petition is satire, protected as political commentary, and requests no action beyond a change in how people speak — which is, after all, the entire mechanism by which the renamings it responds to were accomplished.