The name

Ontarí'io is Wendat — the language of the Wendat (Huron) people, an Iroquoian language. It joins yǫtáreʔ, lake, to 'io, great. The Kanien'kéha (Mohawk) form is Kaniatarí:io; the Chiefs of Ontario cite Oniatarí:io. Translations vary a little — “great lake”, “beautiful lake”, “sparkling water” — but they land in the same place.

Europeans came to it late. The name was first applied to the lake by them in the 1640s. In 1656 Nicolas Sanson published the first map to draw all five Great Lakes in recognisable form — though on it, this lake is Lac de St. Louys. By 1660 the Jesuit Creuxius had fixed Lacus Ontarius in print, and the older name, slightly bent, became the one on every map since.

So the date on these garments is a settler timestamp, and we know it. The lake did not begin in 1656. It was named, and known, and travelled long before anyone drew it.

The north shore of the lake is the traditional territory of the Mississaugas of the Credit. Its watershed is also Haudenosaunee and Wendat homeland. Everything here is printed in Mississauga, within sight of the water it is named for.