Bryan Adams, the man who gave the world "Summer of '69," has now written a song about Donald Trump tossing toys out of the pram. The occasion is Trump's August executive order directing federal agencies to rename Lake Ontario "Lake America," and Adams has responded the way any dignified Canadian rock star would: with rhymes.
A Lake Gets Renamed By Executive Order
Here are the facts, and none of them are made up. In August, Trump signed an order directing US federal agencies to rename Lake Ontario "Lake America." The lake straddles the US-Canada border. Roughly half of it belongs to a country Trump has also, separately, suggested should become the 51st state.
This is the same man who previously renamed the Gulf of Mexico "the Gulf of America," a move that was widely mocked then and has not aged into anything resembling wisdom. The Lake Ontario sequel follows the same creative formula as a direct-to-streaming horror franchise: take the thing people already found embarrassing, and do it again with less budget and no plot.
The order, as The Guardian reported, further escalated a feud with Canada that has strained one of the longest-standing alliances on earth. All of this over a body of water. A body of water that, last we checked, did not ask to be rebranded.
The Province Is Named After The Lake, Genius
Canadians responded with derision, which is the national sport after hockey and apologizing to furniture. Several pointed out the detail that makes the whole thing collapse on contact: the province of Ontario is named after the lake, not the other way around.
So the order doesn't just rename a lake. It steamrolls a name with real history behind it. Lake Ontario has gone by Lac Saint-Louis, Lacus Ontarius, Skaniadorio and Cataraqui Lake over the centuries. People have been naming this thing for a very long time. They were not waiting on a signing ceremony in the Oval Office.
Bryan Adams made that point in verse. The lyrics note that "the 'lake of shining waters' is what the Iroquois called her," and then the killer line: "It's a First Nations name, not an executive order." That is a better argument than anything the White House put out, and it rhymes.
The Song Accuses Trump Of Throwing A Tantrum
Adams doesn't stop at the naming dispute. His new song, "Lake Ontario," accuses the president of "breaking the peace" between the people who live on the lake's shores. Then it gets personal.
The lyrics argue the whole stunt was a distraction from the war in Iran and renewed scrutiny of the Jeffrey Epstein files. "But things weren't going his way in Iran, so like a baby tossing the toys from the pram," Adams sings. "But it feels like another distraction, while the Epstein files were getting traction."
Look, a rock star did not invent the idea that this administration reaches for a shiny object when the heat rises. Plenty of people have noticed that pattern. But it takes a special kind of 1980s arena-rock craftsmanship to rhyme "distraction" with "traction" and land a political point at the same time.
A Love Letter To Canada, With Maple-Wall Defenses
The Lake Ontario track is part of a larger project. Adams described it as a "love letter" to Canada, one that started when a film company invited him to write about the Maritimes. He finished one song, moved to another, then another, and eventually decided to just keep going. The result is the upcoming album "How's It Goin'."
The album includes homages to Canadian heroes. It also includes "51st State," released on July 1, Canada Day, as a repudiation of Trump's efforts to annex Canada. The lyrics there are almost cheerfully defiant: "You can push us to the brink, but where the open road divides, you'll find a wall of maple, with us on the other side."
A wall of maple. Fine. It's the only border wall in this story that's cheap, charming and built entirely out of syrup-adjacent timber.
The Crowd In America Stood Up For It
Here's the part that should make people think. Adams first played "51st State" in public in the United States. He wasn't sure how the crowd would take it. "We weren't sure how people were going to respond to it," he said. "But we got a standing ovation every night for it."
That tracks with something the loudest voices in politics keep forgetting. Plenty of Americans did not sign up for a pointless feud with their northern neighbors. They go to concerts. They buy the albums. They stand up and clap when a Canadian tells them the president is being ridiculous.
"It made me think: perhaps, finally, the tide's turning," Adams said. Whether it is or not, the evidence from the venues is that a room full of Americans will cheer a song mocking the Lake America order. That's about as clean a focus group as you'll ever get.
The Dingo Take
"It's a First Nations name, not an executive order." Bryan Adams wrote that line, and it is the most devastating review this policy will ever get. A guitarist from Kingston, Ontario managed in one lyric what an entire press office couldn't: he explained why the idea is both historically illiterate and spectacularly petty.
Think about the sequence of events. A president signs an order to rename a lake that an Indigenous nation named centuries ago, in the middle of a war and an ongoing Epstein file mess, and his administration expects the world to treat it as serious governance. It's not governance. It's a toddler with a Sharpie, except the toddler has the nuclear codes and a staff that will carry out whatever he scribbles.
The real insult is the cost. Real alliances take generations to build and one tantrum to strain. Canada is our largest neighbor, a trading partner, and a country that shows up. We've repaid that by threatening to annex it and relabel its lake. A rock star has to write the diplomacy now, because the people paid to do it are busy renaming geography. Somebody get Adams a seat at the table. He's the only one in this story who's rhyming and making sense.
Comments