Trump Avenue has hit a dead end.
The 80-year-old president stirred up big feelings over the summer after he said he was renaming Lake Ontario to Lake America as part of a wider economic and diplomatic spat with Canada.
Reprisals from folks north of the border have since followed, the latest of which is taking place in Canada’s own capital, Ottawa.
Its city council unanimously voted on Wednesday to rename Trump Avenue, as Canadians remain in lockstep behind Prime Minister Mark Carney.
“I don’t like the idea of anything that’s named for Donald Trump, who has demonstrated hostility towards Canada,” Ottawa’s mayor Mark Sutcliffe told the press following the vote.
Ottawa named the street after Trump in the late 1990s to highlight his success as a real estate developer.
Ordering deliveries can be tough for folks on the street, which has 65 houses. “It’s embarrassing, like they just chuckle and laugh,” 65-year-old retiree John Germano told The New York Times. “It gets worse and worse every day.”
Canadians have grown to feel increasingly slighted by the president, who has spoken openly about his desire to make their country the 51st U.S. state.
America’s closest ally was no exception either to his sprawling tariff scheme, and in August negotiators from Ottawa and Washington, D.C., failed to reach a new trade agreement.
That meant Trump’s tariffs took effect in the days that followed. They soon met reprisals from north of the border. A trade war ensued.
Ottawa councilor Riley Brockington is fronting the effort to change the name and replace it with something else. The next stage of that work will have people living on the soon-to-be former Trump Avenue draw up a list of replacement names.
He told the Times that the name change was about Trump’s threats to Canada’s national sovereignty, rather than the attempt to rename Lake Ontario.
“He does not deserve the honor of having his name on a city of Ottawa street,” he said. “We’re the nation’s capital.”
“President Trump has done more than anyone to protect the great people of Canada,” White House spokesperson Anna Kelly told the Daily Beast. “Instead of meaningless gestures, these local governments should do right by the citizens they serve, thank President Trump for defending their country, and make a good deal to benefit Canadian and American citizens alike.”
Despite the severe tone from D.C., Canadians are having fun with the horn-locking.
Peter Politis is the mayor of Cochrane, where the unorganized townships of East Trump Lake and West Trump Lake are located. They are not named after the president, but that hasn’t stopped Politis from considering a switch.
He told the Times that they were under provincial control, but “That said, as mayor, I am sorely tempted to wave the mayoral pen and table a motion anyway, given how fitting it feels at the moment,” he wrote.
Mr. Politis mused that he might not stop there.
“On a tongue-in-cheek note, we’ve toyed with the idea of renaming our local landfill dump ‘Trump.’”
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment.
