{"id":279266,"date":"2025-11-13T00:25:14","date_gmt":"2025-11-13T00:25:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/279266\/"},"modified":"2025-11-13T00:25:14","modified_gmt":"2025-11-13T00:25:14","slug":"marc-antoine-dequoy-credits-cfl-for-french-language-embrace-after-2023-grey-cup-rant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/279266\/","title":{"rendered":"Marc-Antoine Dequoy credits CFL for French-language embrace after 2023 Grey Cup rant"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Photo: Pascal Ratthe\/Montreal Alouettes<\/p>\n

The Canadian Football League has embraced the bilingual nature of Canada at this year\u2019s Grey Cup, which hasn\u2019t gone unnoticed by a vocal critic.<\/p>\n

Marc-Antoine Dequoy, a proud Francophone and native of Montreal, Que., ranted to the media at the Grey Cup in 2023<\/a> when he and the Alouettes upset the Winnipeg Blue Bombers to end a 13-year championship drought.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou come here and they only speak English,\u201d Dequoy told RDS in the immediately aftermath of the game. \u201cThey never believed in us! But you know what, man? Keep your English, because we\u2019re taking the Cup. We\u2019ll take it back to Montreal, we\u2019ll take it back to Quebec, and we will lift it at home. Because we are the f***ing champions!<\/p>\n

The Grey Cup branding installed at Hamilton Stadium that year was exclusively English, which became a subject of criticism during the week. The league responded by adding two LCF logos to the field surface and changing some of the electronic signing to French, though Dequoy was clearly still upset by the perceived slight.<\/p>\n

This year, the branding in Winnipeg is all bilingual, a change that started at last year\u2019s Grey Cup in Vancouver despite the Alouettes falling short of the game. Dequoy has noticed and is thankful to see his first language being celebrated by the CFL.<\/p>\n

\u201c(What I said at the Grey Cup in 2023) was authentic and if I\u2019m looking at it right now, the CFL community did a great job because it\u2019s 50-50 as the \u2018Coupe Grey\u2019 (in Winnipeg this year),\u201d Dequoy told 3DownNation on Wednesday. \u201cYou\u2019ve gotta give credit and this is a credit I\u2019m giving. They did a good job of that.\u201d<\/p>\n

The league also quietly changed its anthem policy prior to the start of the 2024 season, seemingly in reaction to the criticism from Grey Cup. The anthem must now be sung in English and French when the Montreal Alouettes or Ottawa Redblacks play, an adjustment Dequoy has noticed and deeply appreciates.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s great and I think it\u2019s a mark of respect. It\u2019s a bilingual country and it\u2019s just basic respect. There\u2019s something precious, I think, having two languages and we should cherish that,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s something that makes us different and that\u2019s what in Quebec we do preach about \u2014 that we\u2019re different \u2014 so I think, as a Canadian, that\u2019s in their culture, so we gotta take care of those little details.\u201d<\/p>\n

With the language issue settled and out of the way, Dequoy and his team can now focus solely on winning the Grey Cup \u2014 or, perhaps, le Coupe Grey \u2014 against the Saskatchewan Roughriders on Sunday.<\/p>\n

The Saskatchewan Roughriders (13-6) and Montreal Alouettes (12-8) will meet in the 112th Grey Cup at Princess Auto Stadium in Winnipeg on Sunday, November 16 with kickoff scheduled for 6:00 p.m. EST.<\/p>\n

The Alouettes defeated the Hamilton Tiger-Cats in the East Final by a score of 19-16<\/a>, while the Roughriders came back to defeat the B.C. Lions in the West Final by a score of 24-21<\/a>. The teams split their two regular-season meetings, though Montreal franchise quarterback Davis Alexander missed both games due to a hamstring injury.<\/p>\n

The weather forecast in Winnipeg calls for a high of two degrees with a mix of sun and cloud. The game will be broadcast on TSN, CTV, and RDS in Canada, CBS Sports Network in the United States, and CFL+ internationally.<\/p>\n

This marks the fifth time the Grey Cup will be played in Winnipeg and the second time it will be hosted at Princess Auto Stadium. The venue\u2019s first Grey Cup was held in 2015 when the Edmonton Football Team defeated the Ottawa Redblacks by a score of 26-20 and Michael Reilly was named the game\u2019s Most Valuable Player.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Photo: Pascal Ratthe\/Montreal Alouettes The Canadian Football League has embraced the bilingual nature of Canada at this year\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":60264,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[437],"tags":[49,48,521,522,520,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-279266","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cfl","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-canadian-football-league","11":"tag-canadianfootballleague","12":"tag-cfl","13":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279266","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=279266"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279266\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60264"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=279266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=279266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=279266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}