The Ben Mulroney Show - Deep Dive Into The History of Lake Ontario

Episode Date: August 26, 2026

On today's episode of 'The Ben Mulroney Show', Ben welcomes Christopher H. Gillcrist, Director Emeritus of the National Museum of the Great Lakes/Great Lakes Historical Society in Toledo, Ohio. We learn about the rich history of Lake Ontario, a lake that was named well before Canada or the U.S. ever came into existence. If you enjoyed the podcast, tell a friend! For more of the Ben Mulroney Show, subscribe to the podcast! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://link.chtbl.com/bms⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Also, on youtube -- ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@BenMulroneyShow⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow Ben on Twitter/X at https://x.com/BenMulroney Insta: ⁠⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠⁠ Twitter: ⁠⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠⁠ TikTok: ⁠⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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He's a petty man. He's been expecting the leverage. the leverage of tariffs to get countries to bend to his will. As somebody pointed out in print, it's like him saying, it's a shakedown. That's a beautiful country you have there. Be a shame if something happened to it. And he's been known to take postures, like, a lot of us think,

why would you do that? Like, he renamed the Gulf of Mexico, the Gulf of America. And okay, sure. Yeah, I guess he can. Whatever floats your boat, Captain. And now he has taking a similar approach saying that he may rename Lake Ontario to Lake America. Well, we decided we wanted to drill down into where the name Lake Ontario comes from. Because it struck me, it probably wasn't picked by accident.

And so please welcome to the show, Christopher H. Gilchrist, Director Emeritus of the National. National Museum of the Great Lakes and the Great Lakes Historical Society in Toledo, Ohio. Christopher, thank you so much for being here. Oh, thank you so much for having me. Yeah, this is, I knew we would find an expert on the Great Lakes. It's been too important. It was too important to early North American history for there not to be people steeped in the meaning and the reason why they are the way they are.

And so Lake Ontario, it wasn't just named because the province is called Ontario. No, no. I mean, one way to look at this is to look at the long history of that body of water, going back thousands of years. And for the vast majority of that time, the name is reflective of the indigenous culture of the people who occupied this land and lived on this land besides that body of water. Ontario refers mostly to the Huron-Wendant culture that dominated that area for thousands of years. And it's loosely translated, it's a beautiful lake or great lake. And so it's really interesting to see the difference between indigenous approaches to naming a body of water adjacent to where they live. and the European style, which, when the French become involved, they tend to want to name the lake after their heroes and their people who have played an important role in their country militarily. So it's no surprise that the French suggested in the early 18th century that it be called Lake Frontenac or Lake St. Louis, relative to their culture.

Yeah. And yet their approach is to name it in honor of important people in their culture, whereas the indigenous approach doesn't name it after important warriors, doesn't name it after important chiefs. It names it for what they saw it as. And I think that's a real significant difference between a European approach and an indigenous approach. Well, I'm sure a lot of people listening had no idea that Ontario, and I'm sure I'm mispronouncing it, but you had the Wendat and a Hadnasoni, it was a Haudenosaun. It was a Haudenosaunee word that meant Great Lake or beautiful water. I think a lot of people just thought it was a recognition that it was, you know, its coastline was at least in part in the province of Ontario. So that, and given Canada's, you know, a path on truth and reconciliation and honoring First Nations, I think it's quite. fitting that that's where the word comes from. But it's been called or used. The name Ontario for the lake has been used since the 1640s.

It predates Canada by over 200 years. Right. And in fact, the province follows the name that the indigenous population gave to the water, the name for the province. And the province's proximity to the water determined its name. as opposed to vice versa. Remind me, Lake Ontario connects to the United States. Where?

In New York, across the southern shore. And then, of course, it spills into the St. Lawrence, which serves as a boundary for a portion going up towards Vermont, New York, Vermont, and then, of course, Maine and out into the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Now, have there ever been any pushes by either Canadians or Americans to, how do we settle on these names? Well, you know, I think one, these names often came from the indigenous culture, such as in the case of Ontario, such as in the case of Erie. Other times, Michigan, and the name Michigan, it has connections to indigenous culture there as well. But, you know, the process of naming lakes, once again, we can go back to that distinction between Aboriginal or indigenous culture, which is through an oral tradition.

And the fact that it was an oral tradition that carried that name for centuries allows for the European, when Europeans come in, allows for kind of an European interloping because of. written culture. Written culture with maps. You put the name of the cartographer on the map and you place everything out on the map with a name. And so once it's in writing, the power of written culture, juxtaposed to the power of oral culture, often sides with a world civilization that is moving towards written culture and allows those people who have access to written culture to choose names for these places anywhere in the world. Has there ever been a push in the history of our shared appreciation of the Big Lakes, I shared use of the Big Lakes?

Has there ever been a push by one side or the other or one group in particular to change any one name of the Great Lakes? No, not really. This has been kind of, I'll say, settled history for, several hundred years, but more recently, and it's kind of it within this realm of thinking and the politics of this realm of thinking. In the late 1990s, Senator Leahy from Vermont, attempted to have Lake Champlain named the Sixth Great Lake. Yeah. And that lasted 18 days before the uproar of people saying, well,

Champlain is a fine lake, but it's not really a great place. It's a fine. And I think, the distinctions between those things. And I think, and I think, you know, in that rough and tumble world of, of, of log-rolling politics and partisan politics, sometimes these things just kind of slip under the radar. But when common sense prevails, people come to the forefront and say, you know, this is the history of these bodies of water, or in this case, this body of water, what benefit does this bestow on everyone at this point in time? I heard that you hadn't heard about this amusing by your president until my producer called you or got in touch with you to let you know that this was on his list of things that may

happen. Yeah, I was, I hadn't looked at the online news sources this morning. I had been a little occupied. And so it was a little bit of a shock. And to be honest, it was a shock in the sense of the establishment of these names that we would begin to address this as an issue, because it really has been settled for hundreds of years. And, and, but that, you know, it's, it's a rough and tumble world in politics these days. And so I think we should, I think that lesson here is we should all be surprised by nothing.

Christopher H. Gilchrist of the National Museum of the Great Lakes and the Great Lakes Historical Society. Thank you for the history lesson, sir. I appreciate it. Thank you so much.