The bilingual paper slips tucked inside the fortune cookies of Nouilles Wing were a fixture of Chinese food across Canada for decades, produced out of a pair of 19th-century buildings on the edge of Montreal's Chinatown. But the factory, which closed for good in 2025 after more than 75 years of production, contained something far more layered than anyone outside its walls fully understood.
This week, the Centre des mémoires montréalaises (MEM) announced the acquisition of the Wings Collection: more than 5,000 objects and thousands of documents pulled from the attics, basements, and warehouses of the Wing company. Commercial archives, manufacturing equipment, family photographs, personal papers. Together, they trace over 130 years of Sino-Montréal history, from the company's founding in 1897 through generations of the Lee family, who ran it until the end.
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