Bryan Adams Trolls Trump With New Song on Canada
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What happened
Canadian rock musician Bryan Adams released “Lake Ontario,” a bonus track on his upcoming album How’s It Goin’. The song criticizes a U.S. executive order President Donald Trump signed in August directing federal agencies to rename Lake Ontario “Lake America,” following an earlier order that renamed the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America.” Adams’s lyrics identify the name with the Iroquois phrase “lake of shining waters” and call it “a First Nations name – not an executive order,” while portraying the rename as “another distraction” “while the Epstein files were getting traction” and “like a baby tossing the toys from the pram” after “things weren’t going his way in Iran.” Adams described the album as a “love letter” to Canada that began with a film-company invitation to write about the Maritimes, and said of the new song: “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.” In July he had also released “51st State” on Canada Day, opposing Trump’s comments about annexing Canada.
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- How it developed
- When the first report landed and whether it named anyone; when the first named source and the first document appeared. Here: First report Oct 29, 17:49 UTC by The Guardian, naming its source. First document in the first report, from The Guardian (song lyrics).
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This is about who is cited, not whether the story is true. Each source below says what it names. How we count
Omitted — what each side leaves out
Unpacked
Readers of right-leaning coverage never learn that the Lake Ontario order followed Trump's earlier rename of the Gulf of Mexico. Left-leaning coverage in the Guardian presents that echo as the backdrop for Bryan Adams's song and for a feud that strained the U.S.-Canada alliance. Breitbart describes only the Lake Ontario rename, then turns to Iran and the Epstein files, so the track reads as a complaint about one lake rather than a jab at a repeated geographic rebrand.
Right-leaning coverage leads with Epstein; left-leaning coverage leads with the name of the lake. That split is in the headlines: Breitbart puts the Epstein files first, while the Guardian opens on older names for the water and treats Epstein as a later suggested distraction.
Can a U.S. executive order actually rename a lake that sits on both sides of the border?
Bottom line
Read only Breitbart and Adams wrote an Epstein song about a lake; the Guardian is what tells you he was mocking a rerun of the Gulf of America name change.
The receipts — 4 facts one side's coverage lacks
- Adams said the song is for sane people on both shores who know the current madness will pass and Lake Ontario will always be Lake Ontario
- The province of Ontario is named after the lake, not the other way around
- The lyrics call the rename a low blow and a dog and pony show
- Adams described the album as a love letter to Canada that began with a film-company invitation to write about the Maritimes
The Left View
The Guardian frames the track as Adams “troll[ing]” Trump and defending the lake’s Indigenous name against a move that “further escalated a feud with Canada” and “strained the longstanding alliance.” It says the order was “largely met with derision in Canada,” including the point that the province of Ontario is named after the lake, and highlights lyrics that he is “breaking the peace” and using the rename to deflect from Iran and “renewed scrutiny of the Jeffrey Epstein files.” The paper places the song inside Adams’s Canada-themed project, treating “51st State” as “another repudiation” of annexation talk, and quotes him saying U.S. crowds gave that earlier song a standing ovation, which “made me think: perhaps, finally, the tide’s turning.”
The Right View
Breitbart frames the release as Adams “complaining” about the rename and “claiming it is somehow related to the late Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking.” It describes a track that “wails about” the “Lake America” order as “entirely devoted to complaining about President Trump,” with references to the Epstein files and “the current war with Iran,” and notes lyrics that call the move a “low blow” and a “dog and pony show.” The outlet quotes Adams that the song is for “sane people” who know “the current madness will pass,” and says this is “not the first time” he has released a protest song against Trump, citing “51st State.”
Our Take (balanced)
The left’s strongest argument is that Adams is answering a unilateral U.S. rename of a shared, Indigenous-named lake in terms that match Canadian derision and alliance strain, with “a First Nations name – not an executive order” as the core claim. The right’s strongest argument is that the song does not show why the order was issued and instead asserts a motive—distraction from Iran and the Epstein files—that Breitbart treats as Adams’s claim, not a demonstrated fact, making the track political complaint. The central unresolved tension is whether “Lake Ontario” is a fair response to a real naming and diplomatic affront, or a protest song that yokes a symbolic geographic order to unrelated scandals without showing a causal link.
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