OQLF walks back order: Pub Burgundy Lion’s sign can remain as is

The Office québécois de la langue française (OQLF) will allow Pub Burgundy Lion, in Montreal’s in the Sud-Ouest, to keep its sign as it is.

It comes after the establishment’s co-owner, Toby Lyle, denounced that he was told by Quebec’s language watchdog to change their sign — which has been there for 17 years — to add more French to it, claiming the word “Burgundy” was not French.

“I only made a Facebook post less than 48 hours ago, I guess,” Lyle told CityNews. “And yeah, lots of public support and it looks like the OQLF is backing down. The sign can stay, the whiskey regions can stay and everything seems to be resolved.

“I wonder if they would have backed down had it not been for public support and media, but as it stands, yeah, it seems to be resolved.”

Lyle argued that the sign and the name is rooted in the history of the neighbourhood: Little Burgundy — and that all words in the signage respected language rules. He responded to them saying he was not going to change the sign that’s been there since 2008 when they opened.

“I would be remiss if I had just accepted and changed the sign,” Lyle told CityNews on Thursday. “I feel like it’s doing a disservice to the community of Little Burgundy and doing a disservice to us as a business, so I have to push back on this.

“Little Burgundy is an important historical neighbourhood in Montreal and to take that name away or have to adjust a sign because that name is on there was very frustrating to me and the community in general. So I’m super happy that it can stay. Little Burgundy is considered now, I guess a French word.”

As of June 1, new regulations under Bill 96 through Quebec’s French-language Charter require that French be strongly predominant on all signs and commercial advertising visible to the public, with French text generally occupying at least twice the space of any other language. 

On its website, the OQLF writes: “A company name that contains a specific in a language other than French and that appears on a display visible from outside a premises must be accompanied by terms in French – such as a generic, a description or a slogan – which ensure a clear predominance of French.”

The OQLF told CityNews on Wednesday that they had been helping Pub Burgundy Lion in their francization process and that a decision about the compliance of the sign was not final.

On Thursday, a spokesperson for the OQLF told CityNews that after “rigorously” analyzing the file with the teams involved, “we can already confirm that certain documents should not have been sent and that it was premature to request changes to the display, since the decision on compliance had not yet been made.”

After analysis, the statement says that the sign “is compliant” and that they have “contacted the company to inform them of this.”

“This is a regrettable situation, and we are sensitive to the reactions it has generated, both from the company and the public,” the spokesperson said. “We will do everything possible to ensure that similar situations do not recur.”

“The woman I spoke to at the OQLF today was very, I mean, you could tell that she realized they made a mistake,” said Lyle. “She was very, very, very, very kind, very nice, very apologetic. I asked them to send me a summary if there’s anything missing. That’s like I said, I’m very happy to change. In fact, it was to my benefit to change certain things that I didn’t realize were not correctly translated on the website. But as far as I know, we’re up to speed now, but we’ll wait for an email from them to confirm.”

The incident is the second highly publicized reversal at the language office in recent months, after the watchdog decided this spring to allow the word “go” to encourage sports teams.

Lyle says public outcry is sometimes needed for change.

“It was a debate for myself whether to go public with this because yes, there is backlash,” he said. “We did have problems with our Google, somebody shut down our Google and said we were permanently closed this morning. We had Google bombed with a bunch of one-star reviews. So yeah, especially as a bar, as a pub, as a public-facing business, you know, you don’t want to be political. You don’t want to alienate anyone, but in certain cases it just seems right.”