CONSERVING WING’S LEGACY IN CHINATOWN
Introduction
The JIA Foundation is launching a strategy to conserve the legacy of Wing Noodles in Montréal Chinatown. In response to a growing uncertainty surrounding the future of the enterprise and its iconic building, the strategy aims to ensure that Wing’s story, integral to the neighbourhood’s community life and cultural heritage, continues to be remembered and celebrated as part of Montréal Chinatown and Chinese Québécois history as we move forward with planning of this historic neighbourhood. As an organization dedicated to preserving and promoting Chinatown’s cultural heritage, JIA is committed to taking the necessary steps to ensure that Wing’s legacy is honoured, and Wing’s building (the former British and Canadian School) is conserved for the community for generations to come.
Context
Wing Noodles, a Legacy Enterprise
With a history going back over 125 years, Wing Noodles has played a long-standing role in supporting and providing for the Chinese community in Montréal throughout its growth as a Chinese-Canadian enterprise. In addition to providing Chinese goods and foods at a time when these were difficult to find, Wing Noodles and its owners, the Lee family, also actively helped many Chinese individuals and their families come to Canada throughout the Head Tax and Exclusion Act eras. As the small import/export business evolved into a successful manufacturing company, Wing’s became a major source of fair jobs to individuals from various immigrant communities, not just the Chinese community. With their success, they also took on a philanthropic role in the community, giving back through donations to local causes including community-organized scholarships, Chinatown revitalization projects and the construction of key community buildings such as the Chinese Hospital.
As one of the main Chinese food manufacturers originating in Montréal, and the last remaining factory in Chinatown, Wing’s has historically played, and continues to play, an important role in the restaurant industry and in Asian households across Canada. Their logo is familiar to many, seen on bags of noodles, soy sauce packs, fortune cookies and more, and found throughout restaurants and grocery stores. Wing’s is also known for being the first oriental food manufacturer to incorporate bilingual (English and French) messages in their fortune cookies as well as to have an entirely kosher certified product line.
Wing’s Building, a Historic Building
Originally constructed as the British & Canadian School in 1826, this building is the oldest remaining purpose-built school in Montréal and one of the oldest in Quebec, notable for having offered non-sectarian education to children of the working-class and of various ethnic backgrounds. At the turn of the century, the Chinese had already begun to occupy the surrounding neighbourhood and provide services to the working class. This includes Hee Chong Lee, one of the first Chinese men to immigrate to Montréal, who established an import/export business called Wing Lung in 1897. In 1963, the former British and Canadian School would be purchased by Lee’s direct descendants, now 3rd and 4th generation Chinese-Canadians, for the expansion of their family business, now known as Wing Noodles Ltd.
The building, each of its stages of life still legible through its layered architecture and ornamentation, stands as testimony to the evolution of the neighbourhood over 200 years of Montréal history and symbolizes the longstanding legacy of Wing Noodles and its roots in Montréal’s Chinatown. With this unique history and character, it offers an exciting opportunity for an adaptive reuse project which ties together heritage conservation with a future-oriented vision for Chinatown, meeting the needs of the current and future generations of Montreal’s Chinese and Asian communities while honouring Wing’s indelible community-oriented legacy within the building’s future.
Wing’s Block, the “Noyau-Institutionnel-du-Quartier-chinois”
The Wing Noodles building, while to be conserved primarily for its individual value, is also strategically positioned within the provincially designated “Noyau-Institutionnel-du-Quartier-chinois”, offering strong potential for the development of community infrastructure in Chinatown’s western sector. This block contains some of the oldest buildings in Chinatown which have been home to institutional and community organizations for generations. Today, the block has a high vacancy rate, but underutilized space activation and redevelopment efforts are already underway, such as JIA’s Chinatown House project at Maison Yep-Riopel.
As Chinatown’s oldest legacy enterprise and a key player in Chinatown’s social economy, the story of Wing Noodles is an important one to tell as part of Chinese-Canadian history and in the development of Montreal’s Chinatown. It is critical that we have a strong community vision to understand and celebrate Wing’s intangible heritage, to develop a community project for the iconic heritage building, and to bring diverse stakeholders together to shape the “Wing’s block” as the Montreal Chinatown’s cultural heritage heart.
THE STRATEGY
This Wing’s Conservation Strategy is an initiative proposed by the JIA Foundation to preserve, honour, and celebrate the legacy of Wing Noodles in Chinatown for generations to come.
Our approach aims to seize the opportunity to understand and promote Wing’s intangible heritage, connecting it with the building’s adaptation and the future of the block provincially designated as the “Noyau-Institutionnel-du-Quartier-chinois”. The Strategy will include a storytelling exhibition on Wing’s legacy at Chinatown House and a community vision with a plan to establish the “Wing’s Block” as Montréal Chinatown’s Cultural Heritage Node that is anchored by a community project for the iconic Wing’s building.
Storytelling Exhibition
As part of a larger community vision for Chinatown’s quickly evolving development, the JIA Foundation is producing a storytelling exhibition of photos, videos and objects to connect the 128 years of Wing Noodles’ intergenerational work to past, current, and future neighbourhood activism. We will be collaborating closely with the Lee family and many other community members and organizations, including Objet de mémoires that created the important Wing’s Collection, to tell this unique made in Québec and made in Chinatown story as we advocate for the future of our Chinatown.
With this exhibition, we aim to:
The JIA Foundation Exhibition Team that has curated our current “Maison Yep-Riopel” exhibition will come together again to produce this new exhibition. We have started our research, partnership discussion, and preparation of this new storytelling exhibition with an opening planned for May 2026.
Conserve Wing’s legacy: The contributions of Chinese-Canadians are a missing page in our provincial history books. As one of the oldest Chinese Québécois businesses, Wing Lung then Wing Hing Lung evolved through some of the most difficult periods of global and national turmoil, acting as a bridge and an anchor for marginalized people. As an architectural relic, the Wing Noodles’ factory design is a prime example of how local businesses operate, adapt, and share space within heritage structures, showing us hints of a future path to building and neighbourhood revitalization.
Showcase relationships at the heart of Wing’s: Wing’s has fostered enduring community bonds, between the employees operating the machinery, to the networks of restaurants and families that have survived thanks to three generations of the family’s leadership, creativity, and generosity. Chinatown is about the people, and the exhibition will tell and celebrate those unknown human stories.
Understand Wing’s history in the context of Chinatown activism: We see history often repeating itself, as new threats to the livability of Chinatown mirror those of decades ago and the community comes together with solutions of their time. From the opposition against the expropriation of Chinatown for the construction of the Guy-Favreau Complex, to the establishment of the Chinese Hospital, and to the recent advocacy for Chinatown’s heritage designation–neighbourhood activism has long played a key role in shaping our Chinatown.
Community Vision
In 2021, the City of Montréal issued the 2021-2026 Chinatown Action Plan, which made key commitments to improving quality of life and the built environment, improving commercial vitality, neighbourhood heritage, and enhancing community connections.
With 2026 fast approaching, the JIA Foundation, in collaboration with the Montréal Chinatown Round Table, released a proposal document in summer 2025 to highlight community aspirations for the renewal of the Action Plan. The document provides a holistic vision for Chinatown anchored by three community projects, respectively anchoring the western, central and eastern sectors of the neighbourhood.
The Cultural Heritage Node around Chinatown House and the Wing’s building aims to create an emblematic anchor point in Chinatown’s western sector that testifies to the cultural richness of Chinatown and actively contributes to its influence. It aims to transform this provincially-recognized “Noyau-Institutionnel” into a true hub promoting Chinatown’s cultural heritage. The Wing’s Conservation Strategy will play a key role in kickstarting the implementation of Chinatown’s Cultural Heritage Node in the western sector.
The JIA Foundation has recently received funding from the City of Montréal Ville-Marie Borough and since engaged the team at Rayside Labossière to support us in developing a community vision with a plan to establish the “Wing’s Block” as Montréal Chinatown’s Cultural Heritage Node. The team will convene a targeted engagement process to create a Partners Table committed to developing and implementing a collective vision for Chinatown’s Cultural Heritage Node that is anchored by a community project for the future development of the Wing’s building.
With this vision development project, we aim to:
- Create and consolidate partnerships with relevant parties
- Foster a strong heritage identity for the block to support the revitalization of the sector
- Develop a community vision to guide future development in the neighbourhood
- Establish the context and assess the feasible scope of a potential community project aimed at preserving Wing’s tangible and intangible heritage
As the need for new beginnings becomes more urgent, it is important to consider how the iconic Wing’s building can be adapted to meet the needs of the community. This should be done in a thoughtful way that takes into account the building’s vibrant heritage, while promoting development that is equitable, inclusive and accessible to the community. Inspired by the vision expressed during multiple community consultations about the future of Chinatown, we envision a building dedicated to diverse community and cultural use, providing much-needed gathering spaces for the neighbourhood’s local community.
The JIA Foundation Planning and Research Team that has worked on the Clark Street Reimagined initiative has already started mapping out the timeline and engagement process for this project. With the support of the Rayside Labossière team, we plan to work closely with all community partners to finalize a community vision with a roadmap for its implementation by September 2026.
How to support
As the JIA Foundation launches this Strategy, we hope to bring the community together to share our memories, build our relationships, and create a concerted course of action together to conserve Wing’s legacy in Chinatown, right where it belongs. Sign up to JIA’s newsletter to receive regular updates of this initiative and find out how you can be part of this campaign. Please also consider donating to the JIA Foundation to support our efforts.
