Canadian rocker Bryan Adams has released a new single, taking aim at U.S. President Donald Trump and his executive order to rename Lake Ontario to Lake America.
The song, titled Lake Ontario, was released on Wednesday and will appear as a bonus track on the Kingston, Ont.-born singer’s upcoming album, How’s It Goin’, set to be released on Nov. 6.
In August, Trump signed an executive order directing U.S. federal agencies to refer to Lake Ontario as “Lake America.”
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“Empires and regimes, dictators and kings, they all come and go. Lake Ontario is forever. This is a song for all the sane people on both shores who know that the current madness will pass, and that Lake Ontario will always be Lake Ontario,” Adams said in a statement.
In the new song, the 66-year-old singer calls out “a baby tossing the toys from the pram” due to things not “going his way in Iran.”
“From glacial erosion – to Indigenous care / From European exploration – to industrial wear and tear / The ‘lake of shining waters’ is what the Iroquois called her / It’s a First Nations name – not an executive order,” Adams begins the song.
Elsewhere in the song, Adams refers to the renaming of the lake as “another distraction” as “the Epstein files were getting traction.”
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Trump has consistently denied any wrongdoing in connection with Epstein. The Justice Department said in January that some of the documents in the Epstein files contain “untrue and sensationalist claims against President Trump that were submitted to the FBI right before the 2020 election.”
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The Trump administration has faced backlash since the rollout of the files began in December, with critics accusing the department of hiding certain documents or over-redacting files.
“One day they’ll come out and we’ll say ‘there you go’ / And then we’ll all dive into Lake Ontario,” Adams sings. “After centuries of trade and war / People settled down on the banks and shores / All rivalries and conflicts – had all but ceased / But it just took one dude to break that peace.”
Adams’ music video for Lake Ontario showcases clips of the singer in a row boat on the water.
In June, the Summer of ’69 singer released another song taking aim at Trump, titled 51st State, in which he celebrated Canadian pride and “values that have shaped the country from coast to coast to coast.”
“I wanted to write something about Canada because Canada is home,” Adams said ahead of the release of the song on Canada Day. “There is more that binds us than divides us. This is a tribute to the pride and spirit of my fellow Canadians – the rest is just noise.”
“Let me give it to you straight / When you’re talking ’bout my home / You better show some respect / ‘Cause up here we take care of our own / So let me give you some advice, mister / You might have too much on your plate / Go on load us up with tariffs / But we’ll never be the 51st State,” Adams sings.
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Bryan Adams stands up for ‘Lake Ontario’ with new song that takes aim at Trump’s renaming attempt
Trump has repeatedly said Canada should be the 51st U.S. state.
In May 2025, during a White House meeting on the future of the Canada-U.S. relationship, Prime Minister Mark Carney told Trump that Canada is “never for sale.”
The prime minister told reporters afterward that he asked Trump during their meeting to stop referring to Canada as the “51st state.”
More recently, Trump hit the campaign trail with Republican candidates across the U.S. ahead of the midterm elections and revived his rhetoric on wanting Canada to be the “51st state” of the United States.
“They’ll end up being the 51st state, because that’s the only way it works,” Trump told the crowd at a rally earlier this month.
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“We don’t need them, but they need us,” Trump said, adding that Canada would be “doing something just like Greenland.”
—With files from Global News’ Uday Rana and The Canadian Press
