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When I Heard a Montreal Fortune Cookie Factory Was Closing, I Needed to Get Inside

More than sixty years in business and one photographer determined to witness the last batch

When I Heard a Montreal Fortune Cookie Factory Was Closing, I Needed to Get Inside

More than sixty years in business and one photographer determined to witness the last batch

WORDS AND PHOTOS BY EZRA SOIFERMAN

Published 6:30, MAY 8, 2026

“SORRY. IT’S A SECRET. Goodbye.”

This was the answer I got when, about a year ago, on a creative whim, I cold-called Wing Noodles, Montreal’s oldest and largest maker of fortune cookies, asking if I could photograph the manufacturing process of their cookies.

Then, last November, I learned that Gilbert and Garnet Lee, brothers and co-owners of the Wings factory that had been in the family—and in Montreal’s historic Chinatown—since 1897, had sold their heritage-status building. Gilbert was awaiting a double knee replacement, and........

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