If this factory closes, a century of Montreal's Chinatown history goes with it

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.