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NEW: Québec City, 1935-1976

Posted: 27 Aug 2023 21:15
by Groceteria
This one was a bit of a challenge (see notes):
https://www.groceteria.com/place/quebec/quebec-city/

Re: NEW: Québec City, 1935-1976

Posted: 27 Aug 2023 22:05
by Andrew T.
Nice one!

I'm curious about the "alphabetizing dilemmas" you encountered. I'm also curious whether the older directories (pre-Quiet Revolution) were printed in English or in French.

Re: NEW: Québec City, 1935-1976

Posted: 28 Aug 2023 19:15
by Groceteria
Québec City directries are here. They're bilingual from the outset, but are pretty much French-only by the 1950s. Québec City never really had the anglophone population that Montréal did.

The big issue is French word order for both street and store names. Instead of, say, "Tremblay Foods", you get "Alimentation Temblay" so it's under "A" rather than "T" and you have a list of 50 or 60 different store names that all start with "Alimentation" or "Magasins" (stores) or "Marché" (market). Sometimes it's not consistent, so two locations of a chain might be "Épicerie Raymond" (under "E") and one other one might be "Raymond Épicerie" (under "R"). And in the earliest directories, Dominion was still a "store."

The street names are ever worse. Rues (streets) and avenues are alphabetized under the proper name, so Rue Desjardins would be under "D" as you might expect. But boulevards and chemins (roads) are all under "B" and "C" respectively (e.g. Boulevard Ste-Foy would be under "B" rather than "S" and Chemin Royale would be under "C" rather than "R").