Street named after Trump sparks fury in Canada—‘Taco Avenue’ among replacement ideas

According to reports, some of the possible names being considered to replace the street name are as unusual as “Taco Avenue” and “Obama Avenue.”

In a unanimous vote this week, Ottawa City Council took the first step towards renaming the street, which is located in the Central Park neighbourhood of Ottawa. The street has carried Trump’s name for the past 25 years.

However, amid worsening trade tensions between Canada and the United States and Trump's repeated criticism of Canada, some local councillors have reportedly said they consider the street name an embarrassment and do not want anything in Ottawa named after the US president, CNN reported.

The development comes as tensions between Ottawa and Washington have intensified over trade.

Trump has also signed an executive order seeking to rename Lake Ontario as “Lake America”, a move that has drawn strong opposition from Canada and could further strain relations between the two neighbours.

The proposed name change followed the collapse of trade negotiations between the US and Canada. After the talks failed to produce an agreement, Washington imposed new 50% tariffs on $20 billion (C$28 billion) worth of Canadian goods.

Trump had repeatedly threatened to rename Lake Ontario, one of the five Great Lakes shared by the United States and Canada.

According to a White House statement, the US Interior Secretary has been directed to coordinate with the US Board on Geographic Names and take appropriate steps within 30 days to rename the body of water currently known as Lake Ontario as “Lake America.”

The order describes the lake as being bounded to the south and east by New York state and to the north, west and southwest by the Canadian province of Ontario.

Canada pushes back

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney strongly objected to the proposed name change, pointing to the lake's centuries-old history.

“The name Lake Ontario comes from the Wendat word Ontari’io, which, appropriately, means ‘the lake is beautiful, the lake is big’,” Carney wrote on X.

He noted that the name is more than 400 years old and predates both Canadian Confederation and the United States Declaration of Independence.

“We know that America is changing. Their trading relationships, their foreign policies, their national monuments, their hydronyms,” Carney said.

He added: “Canadians also know that naming reality means calling it Lake Ontario – then, now and always.”

The potential renaming of the Ottawa street, coupled with the dispute over Lake Ontario's name, comes against the backdrop of increasingly strained Canada-US relations over tariffs, trade and Trump's repeated remarks about the neighbouring country.