WA&A Records was a Canadian record store chain. Prior to the expansion of Sam the Record Man in the early 1960s, A&A was the dominant record store chain in Canada. It was acquired by CBS Records after it lost the dominant market position to the Sam's chain, but was reacquired by a Toronto investment group in 1981. After an ill-advised attempt to rapidly expand their scope of operations in the late 1980s and early 90s, A&A Records filed for bankruptcy in 1993, shutting down all stores.
WAbitibi Power and Paper Company was a forest products business based in Montreal, Quebec, that was founded in 1914. The firm was a mainstay of the Canadian newsprint industry in the first half of the 20th century, and now forms part of Abitibi-Consolidated.
WThe ALDO Group branded as ALDO, is a Canadian multinational corporation retailer that owns and operates a worldwide chain of shoe and accessories stores. The company was founded by Aldo Bensadoun in Montreal, Quebec, in 1972, where its corporate headquarters based in the Montreal borough of Saint-Laurent, Quebec remain today. It has grown to become a worldwide corporation, with nearly 3,000 stores across 100 countries, under three retail banners: ALDO, Call It Spring/Spring and GLOBO. Stores in Canada, the U.S., the U.K., and Ireland are owned by the Group, while international stores are franchised. The company once operated the now closed or rebranded banners Little Burgundy, Simard & Voyer, Christian Shoes, Access, Pegabo, Transit, Stoneridge, Locale, Feetfirst and FIRST.
WCampeau Corporation was a Canadian real estate development and investment company founded by entrepreneur Robert Campeau. It was infamous from its ultimately unsuccessful acquisitions of American department store holding companies Allied Stores in 1986 and Federated Department Stores in 1988. The whole organization soon was mired in bankruptcy and spurred the decline of the regional department store.
WCarillion plc was a British multinational construction and facilities management services company headquartered in Wolverhampton in the United Kingdom, prior to its liquidation - officially, "the largest ever trading liquidation in the UK" - which began in January 2018.
WCirque du Soleil is a Montreal-based entertainment company and the largest contemporary circus producer in the world. Located in the inner-city area of Saint-Michel, it was founded in Baie-Saint-Paul on 16 June 1984 by former street performers Guy Laliberté and Gilles Ste-Croix.
WThe T. Eaton Company Limited, commonly known as Eaton's, was a Canadian department store chain that was once Canada's largest. It was founded in 1869 in Toronto by Timothy Eaton, an immigrant from what is now Northern Ireland. Eaton's grew to become a retail and social institution in Canada, with stores across the country, buying-offices around the globe, and a mail-order catalog that was found in the homes of most Canadians. A changing economic and retail environment in the late twentieth century, along with mismanagement, culminated in the chain's bankruptcy in 1999.
WGandalf Technologies, or simply Gandalf, was a Canadian data communications company based in Ottawa. It was best known for their modems and terminal adaptors that allowed computer terminals to connect to a number of host computers through a single interface.
WIsuma is an artist collective and Canada's first Inuit-owned (75%) production company, co-founded by Zacharias Kunuk, Paul Apak Angilirq and Norman Cohn in Igloolik, Nunavut in 1990. Known internationally for its award-winning film, Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner, the first feature film ever to be written, directed and acted entirely in the Inuktitut language, Isuma was selected to represent Canada at the 2019 Venice Biennale where they screened the film One Day in the Life of Noah Piugattuk, the first presentation of art by Inuit in the Canada Pavilion.
WJacob is a private five store Canadian chain of women's and girls' clothing store chain based out of Montreal, Quebec. At its peak, Jacob once had over 200 stores all over Canada, usually in malls. In addition to its main brand Jacob, the company operated under the banners Jacob Connexion, Jacob Lingerie, Josef and Danz.
WJam Filled Entertainment is a Canadian animation studio based in Ottawa, Ontario. Jam Filled is a division of Boat Rocker Media and has additional facilities in Toronto and Halifax. It is best known for animating the Nickelodeon series The Loud House, and for animating Thomas and Friends between 2013 and 2019.
WMetropolitan Stores of Canada Ltd. was a Canadian variety department store chain based in Winnipeg, Manitoba.
WNetlink Computer Inc. was an online computer hardware and software retailer based in Richmond, British Columbia, Canada, founded in 1996 by Steve Wu (伍啟儀). The company served as an incubator for Linus Tech Tips, which was originally conceived by NCIX while Linus Sebastian was working there.
WOlympia & York was a major international property development firm based in Toronto, Canada. The firm built major financial office complexes including Canary Wharf in London, the World Financial Center in New York City, and First Canadian Place in Toronto. It went bankrupt in the early 1990s and was recreated to eventually become Olympia & York Properties.
WJ. Pascal's Hardware and Furniture was a Montreal, Quebec, Canada-based chain of hardware stores and furniture stores.
WQuadriga Fintech Solutions was the owner and operator of QuadrigaCX, which was believed to be Canada's largest cryptocurrency exchange. In 2019 the exchange ceased operations and the company was declared bankrupt with C$215.7 million in liabilities and about C$28 million in assets.
WQuebecor World Inc. was a printing subsidiary of Quebecor Inc. based in Montreal, Quebec. It comprised a number of small and large print shops throughout the world. In 2010, Quebecor World was acquired by Wisconsin-based Quad/Graphics.
WReitmans Ltd. is a Canadian retailing company, specializing in women's clothing. The company operated several store brands, including Reitmans, R.W. & Company, Penningtons, Addition-Elle, Thyme Maternity, Cassis, Smart Set and Hyba.
WResolute Forest Products, formerly known as AbitibiBowater Inc., is a pulp and paper manufacturer headquartered in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, formed by the merger of Bowater and Abitibi-Consolidated, which was announced 29 January 2007. At the time, AbitibiBowater was the third largest pulp and paper company in North America, and the eighth largest in the world. On 1 July 2012, the company name changed to Resolute Forest Products.
WSam the Record Man was a Canadian record store chain that, at one time, was Canada's largest music recording retailer. In 1982, its ads proclaimed that it had "140 locations, coast to coast".
WSears Canada Inc. was a publicly-traded Canadian company affiliated with the American-based Sears department store chain. In operation from 1952 until January 14, 2018, and headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, the company began as Simpsons-Sears—a joint venture between the Canadian Simpsons department store chain and the American Sears chain—which operated a national mail order business and co-branded Simpsons-Sears stores modelled after those of Sears in the U.S. After the Hudson's Bay Company purchased Simpsons in 1978, the joint venture was dismantled and Hudson's Bay sold its shares in the joint venture to Sears; with Sears now fully owning the company, it was renamed Sears Canada Inc. in 1984. In 1999, Sears Canada acquired the remaining assets and locations of the historic Canadian chain Eaton's. From 2014, Sears Holdings owned a 10% share in the company. ESL Investments was the largest shareholder of Sears Canada.
WSilicon Knights was a Canadian video game developer. Founded in 1992 by Denis Dyack, the company was headquartered in St. Catharines, Ontario. They started developing for computers such as the Atari ST and IBM PC compatibles. After 1996, they moved to console titles.
WSteinberg's was a large family-owned Canadian grocery store chain that mainly operated in the province of Quebec and later Ontario. In addition to its flagship supermarket chain, the company operated several subsidiaries across the country. The company went bankrupt in 1992, three years after being sold to private interests, after 75 years in business.
WStelco Holdings Inc. is a Canadian steel company based in Hamilton, Ontario. Stelco was founded in 1910 from the amalgamation of several smaller firms. It continued on for almost 100 years, until it filed for bankruptcy in 2007 and was bought by U.S. Steel. In 2016, the company was sold to Bedrock Industries of the United States, which took the company public. The company made its debut on the Toronto Stock Exchange on Nov. 3, 2017.
WTarget Canada Co. was the Canadian subsidiary of the Target Corporation, the eighth-largest retailer in the United States. Formerly headquartered in Mississauga, Ontario, the subsidiary was formed with the acquisition of Zellers store leases from the Hudson's Bay Company in January 2011. Target Canada opened its first store in March 2013, and was operating 133 locations by January 2015. Its main competition included Walmart Canada and the local Loblaws and Shoppers Drug Mart chains and Canadian Tire to some extent. Target Canada was ultimately unsuccessful, with an overly-aggressive expansion initiative, in addition to higher prices and a limited selection of products compared to Target stores in the United States. The retail chain racked up losses of $2.1 billion in its lifespan, and was widely viewed as a failure, termed a "spectacular failure" by Amanda Lang of CBC News, "an unmitigated disaster" by Maclean's magazine and "a gold standard case study in what retailers should not do when they enter a new market" by the Financial Post. Target Canada commenced Court-supervised restructuring proceedings in January 2015, and finally shut down all of their stores by April 12, 2015.