Eclipse of the chansons

Destination Ontario posted a playlist of eclipse-themed songs on its website, such as “Ain’t No Sunshine,” and “I Can See Clearly Now.” A Francophone man complained to us that all of the songs on the playlist were in English only, on both the English and French versions of the site. He said he had called the agency and observed that there are plenty of French songs it could have included. Instead, it removed the playlist entirely.

Result: We raised the matter with Destination Ontario officials, who acknowledged it was a mistake not to have included songs in both French and English on the playlist. They said they simply took it down when the man complained because it was only a few days before the eclipse. They committed to taking French songs into account for similar events in future.

A few months later, the organization updated its website style guide to require that all content is representative of English and French products, operators and artists. All staff received training on this style guide update.