MONTREAL -- Arthur Lee, a gentle and self-effacing business leader who used his fortune-cookie wealth to become a major philanthropist and respected Chinese community figure in Montreal, died last month. He was 86.

Wing's Noodles, a Chinatown landmark co-founded by Mr. Lee in postwar Montreal, today churns out what may be the only kosher English/French fortune cookies in the world. Mr. Lee personally penned many of the words of wisdom contained inside them.

At his funeral, Mr. Lee was given tribute by mayors and MPs, by his family and his many friends. Most recalled a man who was happier giving than receiving.

Emblematic of his spirit of generosity was a pagoda he'd donated to the city of Montreal for Expo 67. The multicoloured monument, imported from Hong Kong, was dedicated on a plaque to the cause of peace and harmony among all Canadians. It was placed in a small park in the heart of Chinatown.

In 1981, the city unceremoniously dismantled the gift and dumped it in a warehouse for a street widening, part of a series of urban-renewal projects that devastated Montreal's Chinatown over the years.

Mr. Lee never saw his gift again, but he never complained or expressed bitterness.

"He was generous with everyone," says his lifelong friend, James Feng, the first Chinese-Canadian lawyer in Quebec. "He is the only person in this world that I know who has no enemy."

Arthur Lee was born to Chinese immigrants in Montreal and remained fiercely committed all his life to weaving Canadian and Chinese cultures into his values. He felt so indebted to Canada that he gave each of his four sons names starting with the same sound in Chinese as the first syllable in Canada.

"He felt he owed a lot to Canada," said his son, Carson Lee, a Toronto architect whose brothers are named Gilbert, Gavin and Garnet.

As a member of the first generation of Canadian-born Chinese, Arthur Lee struggled against isolation and discrimination to establish a foothold in Canada. His father, Hee Chong Lee, had started a Chinese laundry in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu southeast of Montreal before running an import/export business in Montreal that catered to Chinese railway workers and a fledgling local Chinese community.

When the senior Mr. Lee brought his young wife to Canada from China, he had to pay the $500 head tax imposed on all Chinese immigrants.

Arthur Lee got his first job at age 13 in a Chinese cabaret and restaurant in east-end Montreal called the Moonlight Garden. The business went bankrupt during the Depression and Mr. Lee, who'd saved up his tips to buy into the business, was left penniless.

By 1935, he set out for Vancouver and boarded CP steamships to work his passage to Hong Kong. In the colony, he joined a friend in running a restaurant that served Chinese and Canadian cuisine, and to attract Canadian military personnel, he flew the Canadian flag. It worked.

His stay was interrupted by the outbreak of the Second World War and the Japanese invasion of Hong Kong in 1941. Mr. Lee fled to his ancestral village of Taishan in south China, and spent the war years learning to read and write Chinese.

In 1946, the Canadian government paid for his return home and he became one of the first Canadians to be repatriated -- a distinction he was never to forget.

The year of his return, he helped start Wing Hing Lung with his father and brother, becoming the first producers of noodles and egg rolls in Eastern Canada.

Later, he added another first.

His lifelong friend, Peter Wong, upon returning from New York, suggested he begin producing fortune cookies. He agreed, and also became the first manufacturer in Eastern Canada. At first, the novelties were concocted in an exhausting process by hand, and Mr. Lee's sons still recall getting blisters through their thick cotton gloves as they shaped the piping hot dough.

The process was later automated, but Mr. Lee kept a hand in producing the messages inside, taking his inspiration from Confucius and other sources.

One day a rabbi, who was overseeing Mr. Lee's production of kosher egg-roll covers, suggested that the businessman make his entire plant Kosher. Mr. Lee agreed, and soon began churning out fortune cookies and other Chinese products under kosher supervision.

He adapted to the times. After the arrival of Quebec language laws, Mr. Lee began printing his fortune cookie messages in English on one side, and French on the other.

Mr. Lee's knowledge of both Chinese and Canadian culture made him widely respected in the Chinese community.

Local Chinese sought out his advice. Politicians sought out his opinions. He was a friend of former Montreal mayor Jean Drapeau. Both the former and current men in the Montreal mayor's job -- Pierre Bourque and Gérald Tremblay -- came to the funeral home to pay their respects. Prime Minister Jean Chrétien sent a letter of sympathy. At Mr. Lee's funeral, tributes were heard from MPs and provincial MNAs.

"He showed us you could be a good Canadian, a good Québécois, and a good Chinese," said Mr. Feng.

Mr. Lee was a kindly and upretentious figure with a gentleman's courtliness and a lively sense of humour.

He was unfailingly generous and believed passionately in giving to the country that he felt had helped him.

Through the years he donated to a myriad of causes, from the Chinese Hospital and Chinese Catholic Mission to McGill University and the Jewish General Hospital, where he was recently treated.

Yet he persisted in always living a humble life, and the last car he drove was an ordinary 1985 Oldsmobile Sierra.

"Material things were never important to him," said his son, Carson. "He would rather donate money to a charity than use it for himself."

Mr. Lee leaves his wife of 50 years, Maureen, his four sons, and four brothers.

Arthur Lee, born in Montreal on Aug. 15, 1916, died in Montreal on Nov. 10, 2002.