It’s only a slight exaggeration to say that on the main streets of working-class districts of Montreal such as Verdun, you can hardly go a block without seeing a dépanneur.
So if a resident isn’t satisfied with the service at one “dep,” as they’re called in Quebec English, he can go to another one nearby for his beer, cigarettes, lottery scratchers and newspapers.
But that wasn’t good enough for one Québécois when he couldn’t get service in French at a convenience store in multilingual and multi-ethnic Verdun.
He complained to Benoît Dutrizac, the host of Montreal’s most popular noontime radio talk show, who can always be counted upon to “defend” Quebec’s majority against its minorities.

With voice recorder running, Dutrizac’s producer called the dépanneur, pretending in French to be a customer who wanted to place a delivery order.
The person who answered the phone spoke only accented English. When the producer asked him why he didn’t speak French, the person, who identified himself as an employee, responded with a spew of anti-Québécois slurs and told the caller to take her complaint to the Quebec government.
On Thursday, Dutrizac got the head of Quebec’s French-language watchdog agency, the Office québécois de la langue française, on the line, played her the recording, and extracted a reluctant-sounding promise from her to investigate a complaint against the dépanneur.
The Quebec language law commonly known as Bill 101 gives consumers the right to be served in French, and makes a business that contravenes the law liable to a fine of $1,500 to $20,000.
So for nine minutes of airtime, an immigrant working in a convenience store became Public Enemy No. 1, with a government agency with an annual budget of $23 million and the equivalent of 253 full-time employees looming over him.
That immigrant doesn’t have nearly the prominence of a Québécoise showbiz personality who makes an anti-English remark before a television audience of more than 2 million.
But that so much attention should be paid to what began as an insignificant incident by itself is a sign of the current mood in French Quebec.
Since November, there has been increasing sensitivity to an apparent general decline in the status of French and those who speak it.
It’s fed by competition among the French-language media, which have become the real “language police,” to expose real or apparent disrespect of Bill 101 and the language and people it’s supposed to protect.
We saw a similar pattern five years ago, when sensational reporting of “reasonable accommodations” of religious minorities resulted in the near-election of a right-wing government formed by the now-defunct Action démocratique du Québec.
Not only commentators but some reporters as well appear to believe they have a mission to defend French and francophones.
This plays into the strength of the Parti Québécois, whose best issue, except when it conceded it to the ADQ five years ago, has always been the defence of the Québécois language and identity.
The PQ has been at odds with the federalist newspapers of the Gesca chain, including La Presse. But when .
Last month, when the PQ skyrocketed into first place in popularity among French-speaking voters, Marois, the so-called “Concrete Lady,” got most of the credit.
But maybe the built-up effect of the media attention to language in the previous three months had something to do with it as well.
dmacpherson@montrealgazette.com
Twitter:@MacphersonGaz