Selling books in English in Montreal is a political statement, unless you are simply someone who loves books in any language.

In Montreal’s Plateau neighborhood, just off the buzzing Rue Saint-Denis and a block up the cobblestones of Duluth — a quaint corner store beckons.

White paint coats the frames of large windows and the single slender column that keeps the floors overhead from collapsing on a delicately ornate entrance. Inside, bathed in natural light, lining walls and laid out on long tables like an offering — books.

At the furthermost end of the store sits Aude Le Dubé, 66. Her eyes scan pages through round glasses that are as chic as the rest of her and the bookstore that she owns. Le Dubé’s affinity for understated elegance is in every nook and cranny. The name of her bookstore, De Stiil, is a nod to Dutch modernism. “But I replaced the ‘j’ with another ‘i’ because it looks better,” she said.

The minimalism that accentuates the books — the only bursts of colour in the space — is not what De Stiil is known for.

The small independent bookstore boasts a meticulously curated selection of English translations of literary fiction from all corners of the world, handpicked by Le Dubé herself. Innocuous, unless you consider the surroundings: a francophone neighborhood within a city rattled by sweeping language reforms.

A law that limits language

Quebec’s new language law, Bill 96, came into effect in 2023 to protect and promote the use of French across the province. It is an amendment to the Charte de la langue française, Bill 101, passed in 1977, to establish French as the official language of Quebec.

Under the new law, all government services are to be offered in French only, and new immigrants can access non-French supports for up to six months. Bill 96 also enhances the powers of the Office québécois de la langue française (OQLF), providing a platform for residents of Quebec to lodge complaints or initiate civil proceedings against business owners who fail to offer services in French.

Small businesses with fewer than 50 employees are expected to comply. Non-French-speaking staff must be declared, greetings can be expressed in French only and it is unclear to what extent these new rules extend to goods sold. Should a bookstore sell only the French translations of books by Canadian authors such as Margaret Atwood, Alice Munro or Robertson Davies? Or those by Quebec’s Mordecai Richler?

“I’m not worried,” Le Dubé said. She is, after all, a Frenchwoman.

In an increasingly polarized political and social climate, she remains steadfast in her refusal to take sides. “Bookstores are under a lot of pressure to advertise a position. I refuse,” she said. “Language is a tool, not a weapon.”

The je ne sais quoi of books

Born in France, Le Dubé has been going back and forth between Europe and North America for years. After university she went to the United States, which had been a dream ever since she read F. Scott Fitzgerald as a teen.

“After that, I started reading all the Americans,” she said. Her curiosity was fueled by the counterculture movement — the Woodstock appeal, she calls it. While there, she fell in love and married a California man, who loved reading as much as she did. “I always was an avid reader,” she said. “My husband is too. We influenced each other.”

She followed him to Switzerland, where they lived for a decade before moving to Canada and Montreal in 2012.

Before it was a bookstore, De Stiil was a concept store selling clothing, ceramics, perfume and coffee table books on art. It was a passion project, reflecting Le Dubé’s interest in fashion and design. And then Covid-19 hit.

“I got tired of selling things that were not essential,” she said. “Do we need another t-shirt? Another perfume? No. We needed books that helped us.” She turned to what traditionally brought her comfort — fiction.

She replaced clothing racks with bookshelves and approached her inventory with caution. As her own buyer she had to. “We hardly had any money left,” she said.

More is more.

Le Dubé’s discerning taste gained her a reputation as a true connoisseur. It also fueled her resolve. Now, when Le Dubé reads a book she likes, her shelves will hold the author’s entire canon — if available — by the next month. She seeks more, not less, access as she presses publishers for translations.

“I like books written by poets,” she says. “They have a different outlook on life.”

De Stiil morphed into more than a bookstore. It became a repository of stories and a sanctuary for lonely book lovers. And now, it has become a community.

“[De Stiil] is aesthetically pleasing and you can sit and read a book and feel comfortable without buying anything,” said Leslie-Ann Murray, 42, writer and founder of Brown Girl Book Lover, an online book review site. “And Aude — I love a bookseller who can get talking and sit with you for 30 minutes and just talk about what we’re reading.”

Independent bookstores, along with libraries, are the last remaining democratic and communal space, Murray said.

Should French be foremost?

Le Dubé “is not impressed” with Quebec’s latest language reforms. The OQLF cites statistics concerning languages spoken at home to support their argument that French is declining across the province.

“I have an issue with that because what if they function in French in their daily life outside of their house?” Le Dubé said.

Her own family is bilingual and they alternate between French and English. “I wouldn’t fit in, I guess,” she said, “even though I’m a native speaker.”

Le Dubé doesn’t think that forcing people to speak a language will make it more popular. She points out the irony in referring to English as a colonial language while ignoring the colonial history associated with French.

Books for all

Le Dubé advocates for supporting and investing in all languages, including indigenous and minority languages, rather than prioritizing one over the others. “Why pick one? Why not support? Why not invest in languages?”

At first, not everyone took kindly to Le Dubé selling books in English.

“Oh yeah, we had issues,” Dubé said. “We had people come in and harass us, telling us that this was a French neighborhood.”

She dealt with it by pointing out that not that long ago, the Plateau was a Portuguese neighborhood. And before that, it was a Hungarian-Jewish neighborhood. “So, you know, in the flux of cities, we sit in but a moment,” she said.

The fact that the majority of her customers are bilingual residents, who — like Le Dubé — simply enjoy reading English translations, helps.

“Sure, they come to us because we specialize in translations,” she said. “But they also come to us because we’re nice.”

For Le Dubé, books are sacred no matter the language they’re written in. She wants everybody, no matter what they think or how they live or who they are, to have a chance of broadening their horizons by reading someone else’s tale. She refuses to exclude anybody.

“You don’t ask a baker who gets to buy bread,” she said. “Well, I’m a bookseller. I don’t decide who gets to buy books. Books are about building bridges, not walls.”

Correction: An earlier version of this article also included a mention of author Gabrielle Roy, who was from Quebec. Roy was a francophone writer and wrote in French.

Three questions to consider:

1. Why does the Quebec government believe it needs to protect French?
2. What does it mean for a country to have an “official” language?
3. What languages are spoken in your city?

Filipa Pajevic is a freelance journalist and fellow in global journalism at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto. 

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