In December 2012, the township council voted to select a new name after Canada Post notified many residents that addresses would have to be changed to reflect the municipality due to a phasing out of its rural route system.

The council chose to focus on a simpler name, reducing what it felt was confusion regarding the collective purpose – rather than a persistent notion of disparate parts – intended by the history of amalgamations.

[30] Near the village is Lakefield College School which Prince Andrew, Duke of York attended in 1977, however was dropped as an honorary chairman due to sexual abuse allegations.

[31] In the village itself is the Lakefield District Public School,[32] which opened in 2018 after the Ridpath Junior Public School, named after James William Ridpath, publisher in the late 19th century and early 20th century of the Lakefield News, local businessman, sportsman and dignitary, was closed.

In Paul Nicholas Mason's novel Battered Soles (2005), Lakefield is the site of a pilgrimage, begun in July 1997, which sees thousands of pilgrims from all over the world walk from Peterborough along the Rotary Greenway Trail to St. John's Anglican Church in the village.