MapQuest is once again doubling down on the Lake Ontario name and showing it off in a new ad campaign.
The company put up six-foot-tall billboards, installed in Toronto and five U.S. cities, featuring classic printed MapQuest turn-by-turn directions from each city to Lake Ontario, alongside a blurb that reads, “It’s still Lake Ontario, and we’re still here.”
These billboards, developed by independent creative agency Quality Meats, lean hard into nostalgia and feature exit numbers, highway sign icons, a long URL running across the bottom of the page, and even a random blank page at the end.
https://t.co/ZsKEbnNVsp pic.twitter.com/7QXzcKp8XC
— MapQuest (@MapQuest) September 11, 2026
The billboards were installed in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, Toronto, and Washington DC.
The Billboard in Toronto is located at 43 Lower Jarvis Street, near Lake Shore Boulevard East, and ironically needs only one page of directions to reach the lake (go figure). The U.S. versions stretch about two or three pages.
If you happen to be in one of the U.S. cities and want to look for the cheeky billboards, the Chicago billboard is in the River North neighbourhood near State Street and Hubbard Street, Los Angeles’ is near the company’s headquarters in Santa Monica, and the one in New York is just down the street from both Grand Central Station and the Canadian consulate (fitting) on East 38th Street.
A Quality Meats spokesperson told the Toronto Star that the billboards went up Wednesday.
This new campaign comes weeks after the California-based mapping company went viral for saying it won’t change the name of Lake Ontario (unlike Google or Apple), following an executive order made by U.S. President Donald Trump that changed the name to Lake America.
As of writing, the company’s “We’re not changing it” tweet announcing the decision has reached 106 thousand likes, 12 thousand reposts, and 5.5 million views.
The company also recently launched Lake Ontario merch, including T-shirts, sweatshirts, and a tote bag, all referencing that the company isn’t changing the same.
Source: The Toronto Star
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