Ottawa has answered Washington's renaming of Lake Ontario as Lake America by redrawing the entire map of the United States, with all 50 states now bearing the names of Canadian provinces and territories. The measure, announced by Prime Minister Mark Carney as a direct retaliation for the 50% tariffs on Canadian goods, took effect at midnight and has already forced the replacement of every state highway sign from Maine to California.
«If they can rename a lake, we can rename a country,» Carney said in a televised address, standing before a newly installed map on which Texas appears as «Saskatchewan South» and Florida as «New Newfoundland.» The Prime Minister's office confirmed that the renaming applies to all official US documents, though it stopped short of issuing new passports for American citizens, citing the cost of reprinting them.
The Canadian Border Services Agency has deployed 4,000 additional officers to staff new checkpoints at the renamed states, where travelers are now required to present proof of Canadian residency to enter «Manitoba East,» formerly known as New York. The US State Department has called the move «an act of geographic aggression» and threatened to rename the Rocky Mountains after American presidents, a threat Ottawa dismissed as «peak American.»
In a related escalation, the Canadian government has announced plans to rename the Pacific Ocean as «Hudson Bay West» and has begun distributing updated atlases to every school in the country. The first shipment of 2.5 million maps is expected to arrive at Canadian classrooms by next week, with a second batch earmarked for libraries in the renamed states.