Untitled | The Museum of Jewish Montreal

From the 1950s to the 1980s, Steinberg Supermarkets was the largest grocery retail chain in Quebec. The first Steinberg’s was established in Montreal in 1917 by a Hungarian immigrant, Ida Roth Steinberg, who opened her store at 4419b St. Lawrence Boulevard. Her son, Samuel Steinberg (1905-1978), took over the family business and turned it into one of Quebec’s most popular chains. Sam Steinberg revolutionized grocery shopping in Quebec by founding the first supermarket in Montreal in the late 1940s.

In the 1950s, the Steinberg’s chain came to dominate the Quebec market and expanded into Ontario and New Brunswick. Having parlayed proceeds from his successful enterprise into property investments, Sam Steinberg went on to found the real estate company Ivanhoe Investments. Following Sam Steinberg’s death, difficulties arose among his three daughters over the management of the family business. Their dispute resulted in the dismantling of the Steinberg empire in 1992, with key components divided up among its competitors, the Metro and Provigo supermarket chains. The Steinberg company’s real estate holdings, which included shopping centres, were taken over by the Caisse de dépôt et de placement du Québec.

During this period, broad political and social efforts were underway to give primacy to the French language in Quebec. Sam Steinberg understood the importance of addressing the language question in order to attract French-speaking customers and became the first owner of a major company to make mandatory bilingualism a corporate policy. He also changed the name of the chain from “Steinberg’s” to “Steinberg”, dropping the apostrophe-s to accommodate French usage. In sum, his great achievement was to position a Jewish business for widespread acceptance by the French-speaking middle- and working-class population of Quebec. Indeed, his efforts were so successful that French speakers continued to use the expression “aller faire son Steinberg” (doing your Steinberg) as a synonym for doing the groceries, even after the Steinberg name had disappeared from the commercial landscape.

Sam Steinberg embraced his Jewish identity and made significant contributions to the community through actions such as the funding of the Judaism Pavilion at Expo 67. He also played an important role in Canadian inter-faith activities, notably as Director of the Canadian Council of Christians and Jews.

Compiled by Valérie Beauchemin, translated by Helge Dascher.