Why some Canadian websites showed Lake America instead of Lake Ontario

Some Canadian websites briefly displayed “Lake America” on maps powered by Google this weekend before many of them switched back to “Lake Ontario.” The issue affected sites including Hydro One, Metrolinx, Elections Canada, Loblaw, and Infrastructure Ontario when users zoomed out on the Great Lake. Hydro One said its outage map showed the wrong label because of a problem with a thirdparty mapping service and was fixed the same evening. Global News confirmed the incorrect label appeared on several sites, which used Google Maps data. Google said its map labels can change based on regional settings chosen by website developers. According to the company, developers who embed Google Maps can set a region to localize place names, and Canadian users should see “Lake Ontario” when the region is set to Canada. The label change followed a U.S. executive order and the U.S. Geographic Names Information Service updating the lake’s name in recent days. Tech analyst Carmi Levy said the episode shows how Canadian websites using external APIs can reflect American labeling if regional settings are not configured correctly. By Monday afternoon, several affected Canadian sites had reverted to “Lake Ontario.”