Toronto, “This Bud’s for you.”

Like it or not, drink it or not, you’ll soon hear it a lot. Not Budweiser’s old commercial jingle, but its commanding branding.

Budweiser Stage is taking centre stage at Ontario Place — in place of the old Molson Canadian Amphitheatre.

Two decades after Molson made its mark on the concert venue, it has been outbid — outliving its claim to waterfront fame. Too bad for Molson.

Tough luck, too, for the rest of us. We must master a new corporate place name as Toronto loses another piece of its history, geography, memory.

The winner of this corporate bidding war gains branding rights and bragging rights. The loser is not merely Molson, but all of us — disempowered by powerful corporate interests who can redraw the map of Toronto at will.

Naming rights — and wrongs — are nothing new. The powerful have long imposed their dynastic names on important buildings, cast in stone as a quid pro quo for their munificence.

The difference: Once upon a time, naming rights were timeless. Today they seem meaningless, because they are time-limited.

Are we ready to rename the Eaton Centre, Massey Hall, or Roy Thomson Hall, merely because their namesake’s time has come and gone? Are these destinations not destined to endure?

Perennial name changes minimize the importance of place, while magnifying the ambitions and pretensions of the bidder. Which brings us back to Budweiser versus Molson.

When the beer fits, it doesn’t feel so bad. Molson had a storied history as a Canadian brewery, bankrolling the Montreal Canadiens and profiting from the nationalistic appeal of its “I Am Canadian” anthem in those corny commercials of decades past.

Budweiser, by contrast, is as American as apple pie. For most of the 2016 presidential campaign year, its flagship beer was renamed “America” and its labels redesigned to include patriotic phrases from the Pledge of Allegiance.

Both beers wrap themselves in their respective flags, but bear in mind that Budweiser’s ownership is now more Brazilian than American, while Molson is as much American as Canadian since becoming Molson Coors. Americana aside, Budweiser now boasts of being Canada’s best-selling brand, while Molson Canadian is going flat.

Is the name change an inevitable sign of the times? Beers come and go, and the names can fizzle out with them. Carling O’Keefe was once a Canadian brewing powerhouse, but after Molson swallowed it up, the O’Keefe Centre marquee on Front St. soon faded to black. No longer a good fit, it flitted about briefly as the Hummingbird Centre before metamorphosing into the Sony Centre for the Performing Arts.

Brace yourself for more confusion. If the proudly Canadian Four Seasons hotel chain is one day gobbled up by, say, the Marriott monolith, shall we endure the spectacle of its namesake Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts being transmogrified into the Marriot Music Suites?

Good corporate citizens pay good money for naming rights. But if the objective is to convey a sense of corporate social responsibility, why not aspire to more corporate social sensitivity?

Name it. Pay for it. And stick with it. Don’t stick it to us every few years by changing your mind with name changes that should remain on public places in perpetuity.

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After all, we didn’t change Queen’s Park to King’s Park when Queen Victoria died.

Consider the SkyDome debacle. Built at public expense, it was rechristened the Rogers Centre — sparking enduring public resentment.

As for Ontario Place, it is a public trust. True, the actual concert facility is owned by Live Nation Entertainment, which sealed the deal with Labatt (brewer of Budweiser and subsidiary of foreign-owned Anheuser-Busch InBev).

But the land beneath it is leased from us, from Ontarians. When the deal was announced amid much public opprobrium, the provincial government tried to argue that it had nothing to do with it.

“The re-naming of the amphitheatre was an independent business decision by Live Nation and Labatt Breweries Canada,” a spokesperson said last week.

But it turns out that the government was in on the change. A spokesperson for Live Nation told me Monday they “informed Ontario Place of the new agreement with Labatt Breweries Canada with regards to the venue name changing.”

Upon further questioning, a government spokesperson later provided confirmation: “The decision to re-name the venue was subject to the approval of Ontario Place Corporation in its capacity as landlord. Its board of directors, when consulted, acted reasonably and promptly to approve the re-name.”

Given the government’s earlier evasions, the old Budweiser jingle has a certain resonance:

“This Bud’s for you . . . . You know it isn’t only what you say, it’s what you do.”

Despite what it said about the renamed suds at Ontario Place, we now know what our government did. This dud’s for us.