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Navigation app MapQuest has put up billboards across Canada and the U.S. detailing directions to Lake Ontario, in its latest act of defiance against U.S. President Donald Trump’s executive order renaming the body of water to “Lake America.”
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The app collaborated with creative agency Quality Meats to install the billboards, and the company shared in an email with National Post that the six-foot posts have been erected in six cities: Toronto, Chicago, New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Washington, D.C.
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The designs recreate details from old-school MapQuest printed directions — the company having launched in 1996 as one of the first mapping services on the web — with old highway icons, a banner advert and a long URL running across the bottom of each page.
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Canada’s billboard is located at 43 Lower Jarvis Street, in Toronto, and includes just one page of directions, as opposed to the other cities’ three pages, owing to its location near the shore of the lake.
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Meanwhile, Chicago’s board is found at State Street and Hubbard Street; Los Angeles’ is on Main Street in Santa Monica; and New York’s board is on East 38th Street; San Francisco’s board is at 490 Brannan Street and Washington D.C.’s board is in the northwest quadrant of the District at Dupont Circle.
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MapQuest’s new campaign comes after the company previously confirmed it has no intention of using the name “Lake America” in a social media post, after Trump’s Aug. 27 executive order directed the Department of the Interior to update maps and databases to reflect the new name.
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Both Google Maps and Apple Maps have adopted the name change for users based in the U.S., but MapQuest’s refusal to do the same resulted in a surge of people downloading the app in support of its stance.
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In an email to National Post, MapQuest said it has since reached number one in the U.S. App Store in both the navigation category and overall, surpassing two million downloads as the app’s usage rose to roughly 50 times the normal amount.
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In a recent interview with CNN, Doug Berger, general manager of MapQuest, said he has been “blown away” by the response.
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When asked what he would do if Trump were to ask MapQuest to change the lake’s name, he said: “We’re fully committed to our users right now, and the users are showing what they believe in by downloading our app.”
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He added that MapQuest’s recent actions were not intended to be a political stance, but to give people the names of lakes that they’re familiar with. “It’s fun that we’re talking about geography,” he said.