A provincial road sign in the municipality of Saint-Zotique is causing a lot of confusion for drivers.
“It’s clearly an error,” Mayor Yvon Chiasson said.
The MTQ recently installed a traffic sign that states the Ontario border is, indeed, closer than the Quebec municipality of Rivière-Beaudette.
“I was surprised to see that,” Rivière-Beaudette Mayor Patrick Bousez said.
“It doesn’t make any sense.”
The off-island municipality with the slogan of “the doorway to Quebec” straddles the Ontario border and neighbours the city of Saint-Zotique.
The short drive from the location of the road sign on Principal Street to the Rivière-Beaudette border is less than two kilometres.
In fact, drivers have to go through the municipality to reach the Ontario border.
Both mayors say the sign is incorrect and needs to be changed.
“The citizens who drive by ask themselves if they are in Ontario,” Chiasson said while laughing.
“This needs to be corrected.”
The sign has been getting a fair bit of attention online.
The City of Saint-Zotique posted a tongue-in-cheek statement reassuring residents that their neighbouring municipality was, indeed, still in the province of Quebec.
According to the Quebec Transport Ministry, the sign is, indeed, correct if one measures the mileage from the sign’s location to the city centre of Rivière-Beaudette.
“If they go by that calculation it can work but still it doesn’t make sense that we’re farther than the Ontario border,” Bousez said.
After repeated inquiries from both municipalities, the MTQ said the sign will be corrected.
“It’s wrong but it caused a lot of laughs,” Chiasson said.