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Steinberg - Men

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A great Montreal institution 1913-1986. If you went grocery shopping a few decades back, it is possible you may have said as you left the house: “ Je fais mon Steinberg.”

Steinberg’s Supermarkets began as a grocery store founded in 1913, in Montreal, by Jewish-Hungarian immigrant, Ida Steinberg. Her five sons, led by Sam Steinberg, grew the company from a tiny storefront on St-Laurent Boulevard (commonly referred to as “The Main”) into the most popular and largest supermarket chain in Quebec. It was the first to create the “supermarket” concept in Quebec, with expansions into Ontario (primarily the Ottawa area) and parts of New Brunswick. Steinberg’s eventually entered the real estate market in 1952 under the name Ivanhoe Investments and owned several shopping centers. Ivanhoe turned out to be one of Steinberg’s most profitable ventures and still exists today under the name Ivanhoe Cambridge, now owned by La Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec.

For several decades, and right through to the late 1980s, Steinberg’s was the largest supermarket chain in the province of Quebec. Store outlets could be spotted in nearly every district of the island of Montreal. Sam Steinberg was one of the first employers to implement mandatory bilingualism (English-French) for all his personnel and as a result, the company became so entrenched in Quebec culture that among French speakers, “Je fais mon Steinberg” (“I’m doing my Steinberg”) became a synonym for going grocery shopping, regardless of supermarket chain.

By the early 1990s, rising costs and increased competition were taking their toll, and in 1992 Steinberg’s was placed on the auction block for an estimated $1.5 billion. The Ontario-based Loblaws chain initially attempted to acquire Steinberg’s, a move blocked by the Quebec provincial government on nationalist grounds. The Quebec government then arranged for Steinberg’s to be purchased by its two major local competitors Metro Richelieu and Provigo. To avoid accusations of monopoly, Metro and Provigo sold a few former Steinberg stores to IGA. Loblaws, a number of years later, eventually purchased the enlarged Provigo chain later.

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