Blue Rodeo Gets 16,000 Fans to Shout “Lake Ontario” at Toronto Show

If there was any question about what Canadians think of the name Lake Ontario, Blue Rodeo and roughly 16,000 fans made their feelings pretty clear on Saturday night.

During the band’s annual Toronto summer show at the RBC Amphitheatre, lead singer Greg Keelor took a moment before launching into Blue Rodeo’s classic 1993 hit “Hasn’t Hit Me Yet.”

The song includes the line about “the middle of Lake Ontario,” and with the lake literally sitting behind the waterfront venue, Keelor decided to give that lyric a little extra meaning.

“At the end of this song, there's a mention of a lake. It's a lake right behind us right there,” Keelor told the crowd.

He acknowledged that the lake’s name has recently become “a little controversial,” before encouraging the audience to sing the lyric with some extra enthusiasm.

“I would just like you to sing tonight with full authority and ownership,” he said. “And we'll sing this one for the shining waters that have been there long before any of us were ever here.”

And, oh, did the crowd deliver.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Elamin Abdelmahmoud (@elamin)

When the lyric came around, thousands of fans proudly screamed “LAKE ONTARIO!”

The venue screens even displayed a map showing the lake with its original name as the crowd joined in.

After the song, Jim Cuddy summed up the moment by telling the audience, “That was chilling, folks. We are who we are, right?”

Honestly, it was a pretty perfect Blue Rodeo moment: a Canadian band, a massive crowd, a song everyone knows, and a lake sitting right there in the background.

And for one night in Toronto, there was absolutely no confusion about what the crowd was calling it.

Lake Ontario.

All of this of course coming after U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order attempting to rename Lake Ontario as “Lake America”following the latest trade standoff with Canada.