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Dépanneurs

walkmontreal.com

71 pointsthomassmith6564 comments

They didn't explain the etymology. En panne means broken, not functioning. Dépanner means to remove something from that state, to fix it. A dépanneur is therefore a person or thing that fixes stuff, gets you out of trouble.

Dépanneur == Convenience store

Dépanneuse == Tow truck

Il m'a dépanné en me prêtant vingt dollars. == He lent me $20 to help me out.

Ah la belle langue!

This is all unique to Quebecois, right? I think in France, you'd hear débrouiller more in that third case.

No. Even in France and beyond (i.e. outside of Quebec) you could hear "dépanne-moi", meaning "help me out (with money)".

Dépanneur as convenience store could be a Quebec thing.

Yes, in for "dépanne-moi de 10 balles" but "dépanneur" without context is more someone coming to fix your car or your washing machine.

An online translation tool managed: "out of order" for "en panne". Your translation is far better because it gives the actual, raw and intended (by a local), meaning and not re-translated that meaning into a trite phrase on the destination side.

"Out of order" is something you see on a broken machine and not something to do with a shop!

One day, the AI kiddies will manage to work out how to stuff "Idia" into their wanky offerings. Until then, I'd rather read comments like yours.

Merci.

And penne gets that meaning because en penne used to mean ‘be stuck, not able to move on’

This phrase existed because the penne was a wood affixed to the mast of sailboat that allowed you to move the sail such that the boat slowed down and stopped.

That thing was called the penne because it looked like a pen (the writing instrument)

As in, they redress your state of lacking whatever you went to buy there? It sounds a bit contorted but okay :)

It is from the word "dépanner", not from the word "panne" directly. "Dépanner" evolved from "panne" to mean just in general, helping someone out temporarily.

A tool that would dépanne you would be a tool that would do the job poorly but well enough for now. This is how the name is meant to be understood, a small store where you can buy like eggs, beer, milk, bread (it's a convenience store), maybe batteries, but not a full grocery store or pharmacy or tool place.

Yes, it "dépannes" nearby, instead of making a trip to the grocery store.

Maybe it arose from originally being kind of fix it stores that would repair stuff, I don't know.

Deps are kind of like seven 11. We have a large chain of deps in Quebec called Couche-Tard, but there are tons of no name independent deps, especially in Montreal. You'll often find that many of these mom and pop deps are located on the ground floor of multi-story houses in lower income residential areas, with the owners living in the upper floors.

Most of the sales in deps are cigarettes, beer, soda and snacks. Deps generally appeal to younger people and the working class.

Related: Couche-Tard is trying to buy 7-11.

7-11s are really popular and pimped out in Asia.

It's the same story with Swedish 7-11s: pleasant atmosphere, tidy, nontoxic pastries, employees who still have a will to live. It is disorienting for anyone accustomed to the American version.

In 1989 Seven-Eleven Japan took over the parent Seven-Eleven corporation.

The entire chain or just the Canadian lot?

The entire world-wide chain.

It's really great that they're still resisting the chains, and the delivery services.

Deps had delivery before it was cool. Typically it’s some unemployed old neighborhood drunkard dude on a bike. You call a dep, they dispatch a dude.

Most people had a dep number on a fridge magnet back in the day.

Just how it should be.

A bodega.

bodegas usually have bigger selection & hot food

Weird, but delighted, to see this here as a Montrealer.

Dépanneurs are still very much a thing here, but like most good things, endangered by suffocating industry capture by oligopolies.

Doing my part by doing my late-night party beer runs at my corner dep.

https://urbananews.ca/quebecs-corner-stores-vanish-as-locals...

https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/business/economics/2025/07/06/qu...

Nothing unique about deps. NYC has bodegas, UK has Spars, US has 7/11. Wherever you can still go to buy cigarettes/vapes, beer, sweets, sugary drinks and porn mags, that's a dep.

It has long since lost its etymological purpose. Deps are entirely unhealthy waste of spaces now that grocery stores are omnipresent.

I'm (UK) old enough to remember the old school type of corner shop that a "dep" represents. It isn't a Spar (Dutch import) and it isn't a 7/11.

A dep sounds like the subject of "Open all hours". Nurse Gladys would approve!

They sound like an “Offy”.

Also very similar to Spätis in Berlin (speaking as a Montrealer in Berlin)

https://allaboutberlin.com/glossary/Sp%C3%A4ti

The main innovation of Spätis is the tables outside. You can buy a cold beer for €2 and drink it with friends right outside, or go for a walk with it. The road beer (Wegbier) is a staple of long walks in good company.

Another difference with Spätis is you can buy beer at 8 am. I remember walking to work and seeing a bunch of old drunks at those tables.

Great for pre-drinks though

> Deps are entirely unhealthy waste of spaces now that grocery stores are omnipresent.

One dep takes the space of one apartment, and it helps the thousands of residents around it to not have to walk 15min to get milk.

Seems like a fair trade to me.

Yes, a dep is no different than a corner store with a beer/wine section, but 'dep' is an interesting regional word that is neither used in France nor westward of Quebec.

I recently learned from this web site that "all dressed" pizza is only used by the English population in Quebec to refer to a mushrooms, green pepper, pepperoni pizza The Quebec French use "tout garnie" which a direct translation. I wonder which was first.

Deps are unique in that they sell room temperature cheese curds next to the selection of chocolate bars at the till.

Americans re-discovering convenience stores before they all got transformed into 7-Eleven due to big corporations. How cute.

Before Amazon existed there was a thing called "Librairies" too.

America is a big place. NYC has a corner store on every corner.

Aren't these delis? At least when I used to live in Brooklyn we used to call them that. Often they had signs "Deli and Grocery" or something like that.

A dépanner and a bodega are basically the same. Wonder what other regional names there are for them.

Milkbar in Australia because they used to sell milkshakes and the convenience store aspect was secondary. Over time the convenience store part took over but the name stuck.

Spätkauf/Späti in eastern Germany. Translates to "late buy", because of the longer opening hours.

Couche-Tard owns Circle-K and is looking to buy 7-Eleven. It’s literally the worlds largest dép/convenience store chain

Québec people are so creative with the French language, love it.

Why not use the standard French word for it "droguerie"? Dépanneur or Couche-tard does have a lot more charm to it though, agreed.

As a Québécois from Montréal, we say Drogue strictly for recreational drugs, so "droguerie" sounds like a word for a crack den.

Why do you think that “droguerie” is the standard French word for “convenience store”?

"tabac" feels too restrictive, "Épicerie" feels more like selling fruits/vegetables, "commerce de proximité" feels like it could include things like a supermarket too.

I can think of more unsavory/xenophobic/slang terms for it, but droguerie seems more appropriate.

And on the other end for someone who never been to Québec, "Je vais au dépanneur" sounds like "I'm going to the mechanics (to fix my car)". Very creative.

this goes years back, but in the early 2000s I visited Paris and was a bit scandalized to hear the colloquial name for corner store was "l'Arabe" (!)

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabe_du_coin

I rest my case.

Maybe you are right and I should have used "already existing" instead of "standard".

I'm also curious how a convenience store is called in other francophone areas of the world.

Epicerie seems a more popular option among the “traditional” options.

For example https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%C3%A9panneur says:

    Le mot dépanneur peut désigner :
    […]
    au Québec, une petite épicerie de proximité ou une supérette.
    en Suisse romande, une petite épicerie ouverte les soirs ou les week-ends.
    […]

It points to https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magasin_de_proximit%C3%A9 and https://fr.wiktionary.org/wiki/d%C3%A9panneur where again one finds mentions to epicerie (and none to droguerie).

God forbid the language evolves independently in two regions separated by an ocean.

I find it funny that in France it’s more common to see anglicisms (parking, le weekend) whereas in Quebec more “francized” terms are more common (stationnement, fin de semaine). And then Francois Legault goes and in a speech praising the work of the French language watchdog says “faut faire la job”. Facepalm!

>I find it funny that in France it’s more common to see anglicisms (parking, le weekend) whereas in Quebec more “francized” terms are more common

Because Quebec culture is largely about demonizing anglophones and trying to push them out of the province.

There’s a small vocal group that thinks like that, yes.

But that’s not the reality nor majority of people who want that.

Not to mention the road stop sign screams ARRÊT

It’s: faut faire LE job right :)

ark

Wouldn't that be a drugstore? That's not exactly the same thing as a convenience store

Not tabagie?

I clicked on the link in my RSS feed and expected to see something about cars breaking down in France & Wallonia. In the US people say 'call AAA', and while working in Wallonia it was 'appelle le dépanneur', i.e. the person that gets you going. 'En panne' means 'broken down', and 'le dépanneur' would get you going again.

I wonder if the stores originally were 'dépanneurs', as the original meaning, having started a side business next to their car fixing? Like how 7-11 started from an ice house in Dallas.

Or is it a play on 'helping you to get going again'?

This makes me miss my ex dearly - but Montreal is an incredible city.

https://web.archive.org/web/20250612045043/https://walkmontr...

Essentially a bodega...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bodega_(store)

A depanneur is like a micro-entrepreneur.

is there any difference between a dep and a convenience store or bodega or tabac? all look the same. all pretty crappy.

I think just the bogus nostalgia for

> a meeting point for discussion of politics and sports

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