Our definitive history of Montreal's Wing Noodles Ltd.

Before the chain restaurants and bubble tea cafés, Chinatown had Wing Noodles Ltd.

The red-and-gold lettering on the corner of Côté and de la Gauchetière has been there longer than most of us—if not all of us—have been alive, marking the home of the last standing, still-operating food manufacturer in Montreal’s Chinatown, and one of the oldest Chinese-run businesses in the country.

Generations upon generations

What began as an import shop in 1897 is now a living museum of flour, family, and quiet defiance: The story starts with Lee Yin Geow, a farmer and dyer from southern China who, like thousands of Cantonese men, arrived in Canada during the railroad boom.

By the 1880s, he and his brothers had made their way east, setting up a laundry in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu. In 1897, Lee opened Wing Lung—“eternal prosperity”—an import shop in what would become Chinatown. His son Hee Chong Lee took over, laying the groundwork for what the business would become.

Flash forward to during World War II, importing noodles from China became impossible, and the Lees pivoted from selling to making in 1946. With two sons, Arthur and Samuel, now on board, Wing Hing Lung was born, producing fresh noodles, egg roll wrappers, and wonton skins. It was a practical decision with lasting consequence, and the beginning of Montreal-made Chinese staples that would become familiar to generations.

Arthur Lee was the architect of Wing’s transformation. Educated in Hong Kong and hardened by war (the story goes that he narrowly escaped the Japanese occupation by walking 240 km back to his family’s ancestral village), he returned to Montreal with a sharp eye for modern business and an unwavering loyalty to his community.

He ushered in mass production, helped design custom machinery with his brothers, and in the 1950s, launched Wing’s most iconic product: Yet-Ca-Mein dry noodles.

Tying a knot (of dough)

By the mid-60s, the operation had outgrown its original footprint. Wing’s moved into the former British and Canadian School, a stone structure built in 1826 by none other than James O’Donnell, architect of Notre-Dame Basilica. Arthur 'China-fied' the building, painting its masonry, adding pagoda accents, and anchoring it firmly in Chinatown’s visual identity.

In 1970, the family acquired the neighbouring S. Davis & Sons cigar factory—a building with Presbyterian church bones—and added it to the complex. Two centuries of Montreal history now kneaded into the same dough.

Wing’s was the first to make kosher-certified fortune cookies in Canada, the first to print bilingual messages inside. The first batch was for a wedding proposal.

They declined to include lottery numbers—“We don’t condone gambling,” said George Lee, Arthur’s son and now co-owner. But they did embrace storytelling. For years, Arthur and family friend Peter Wong crafted the fortunes by hand, adding a personalized touch of poetry.

By then, Wing was doing much more than noodles and cookies. They were producing sauces, almond biscuits, portion paks, and organic noodles (though those never quite took off).

Off-limits to outsiders, the machines rolled, steamed, sliced, and folded, but the human touch never left. Employees often stay for decades.

Preservation remains

But time moves, and not always in the right direction. In 2021, the Lee family sold the buildings to developers. While Wing remains a tenant for now, the change sent shockwaves through the community.

It’s not just about one business. Chinatown is home to some of Montreal’s oldest surviving residential buildings, many older than those in Old Montreal. Both a cultural and architectural threat, this living, breathing chapter of the city’s early urban DNA risks being wiped out.

Thanks to public pressure, both Wing buildings—along with several others—have been granted provincial heritage status. But designation isn’t a guarantee. It’s a safeguard, a placeholder, a plea to remember what matters.

Wing Noodles Ltd. is a monument. Maybe not in the grand, bronze plaque sense, but in the way a place becomes sacred through use. Through the generations of Lees who poured themselves into it. Through the workers who came from every corner of the world and found purpose on the production line. Through the countless Montrealers who cracked open those cookies, and probably not knowing they were biting into a story that started in a laundry 125 years ago.

If Wing goes, we lose more than noodles. We lose one of the last anchors of a Chinatown that built—and still defines—this city.