A Gatineau event planning company is taking the weekend to add more French to the marketing material for two newly-announced festivals after a number of Francophones complained their language was an "afterthought."

This week Orkestra helped launch SugarLumberFest, a pop up sugar shack and lumberjack show at Lansdowne Park in April and Midnight Race, a nighttime obstacle course at Mont Cascades in Cantley, Que., in August.

However, their marketing led to backlash from Francophones that not all of the logos, websites and social media accounts were in French.

Ottawa 2017 director Guy Laflamme clarified the morning of the SugarLumberFest launch that all communications and services would be done in both official languages, then Orkestra announced Saturday morning it would try to make separate English and French social media accounts and websites by Monday.

Alex Van Dieren, the company's vice-president, said in an email that Orkestra read and heard about how much English was being featured and were making the change out of respect for their French clients and participants.

Felt left out

The president of a group representing Francophones in Ottawa said she thinks what happened was more about forgetfulness on the part of the organizers, not out of spite.

"It's kind of [like] feeling left out for the Francophone community, having to remind people that you exist or it would be important to market to Francophones as well as Anglophones for this event," said Aja Besler, president of the Association of Francophone Communities of Ottawa.

"Especially because it's part of the celebrations for the 150th anniversary of Canada. In those kind of events, I feel like bilingualism shouldn't be an afterthought."

The president of Impératif français, which promotes French language and culture, told Radio-Canada he's disappointed because this makes it seem like the best way to promote an event is in English, which discourages diversity.