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Loblaw Companies

Canadian retail company

Layered newspapers, civic records and oral-history reels arranged as chronological evidence
History and societyInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJul 25, 2026
Entity authorityQ909856
Source-derived summary

Loblaw Companies Limited is a Canadian retailer established in 1919 and encompasses its corporate and franchise supermarkets operating under 22 regional and market-segment banners (including Loblaws), as well as pharmacies, banking and apparel. Loblaw operates a private label program that includes grocery and household items, clothing, baby products, pharmaceuticals, cellular phones, general merchandise and financial services. Loblaw is the largest Canadian food retailer, and its brands include President's Choice, No Name and Joe Fresh. It is controlled by George Weston Limited, a holding company controlled by the Weston family; Galen G. Weston is the chair of the Loblaw board of directors, as well as chair of the board of directors and CEO of Canada-based holding company George Weston.

Most of Loblaw's 220,000 full-time and part-time employees are members of the United Food and Commercial Workers, with the exception of workers at The Real Canadian Wholesale Club in Alberta, who are members of the Christian Labour Association of Canada.

Loblaw's regional food distribution divisions include Westfair Foods Ltd. in Western Canada and Northern Ontario, National Grocers Co. Ltd. in Ontario, Provigo Inc. in Quebec, and Atlantic Wholesalers Ltd.

Editorial summary

“Loblaw Companies” enters the record as canadian retail company. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Loblaw, Companies and Canadian can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA useful synthesis for locating the documentary relationships between formal authority, participants and affected communities. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1919—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1919. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Loblaw, Companies and Canadian.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Loblaw Companies” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Loblaw, Companies and Canadian provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 25, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q909856. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1919.

Critical limits

Later summaries often reconcile disputed chronology or motive more neatly than the contemporary record permits. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.

Best used for
  • Event chronology
  • Institutional context
  • Locating named record creators
Verify next

Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Loblaw Companies”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Loblaw Companies primary sources, Loblaw Companies archive and Loblaw research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Loblaw Companies”?
  2. What chronology connects this entry to wider political or social change?
  3. Which voices are present, absent or mediated by the institution?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Loblaw Companies” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.