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“broke new ground, advancing the frontiers of knowledge. However, my heroes are entrepreneurs. I subscribe to the Schumpeter school of economics in which the entrepreneur, the agent of innova- tion, is the hero. It is the entrepreneur who propels economies forward. The genius of entrepreneurs, as Schumpeter argued, is their capacity to”
“school of economics in which the entrepreneur, the agent of innova- tion, is the hero. It is the entrepreneur who propels economies forward. The genius of entrepreneurs, as Schumpeter argued, is their capacity to generate “creative destruction.” That is, through innovation, they make possible new sectors and new industries that attract resources from old ones and grow economies. That is as it should be. My admiration is perhaps greatest for the talented entrepreneurs”
“economy, an entrepreneur has to pull against gravity to succeed in my region. Yet that is precisely what K.C., Jim, Jack, and Arthur Irving, John Bragg, Harrison and Wallace McCain, among a few others, have been able to do. I thought that I owed it to one of them to write his”
“This is a story about a man from a small community who, together with his brothers, built a global empire. Harrison McCain was a lead- ing entrepreneur of the last century. He had all of the strengths of a great entrepreneur and some of the weaknesses as well. He was bold and decisive, and, if needed, could hold a meeting in his own mind, without need for others to help make a decision. The meetings never lasted long, but they produced decisions and results. Though the early years at McCain Foods were particularly challenging, he seldom had time or inclination for self-doubt. His deep attachment to his business, his community, and its residents is legendary. Driving through Florenceville, one intuitively slows down. The com-”
“accounts, little time or inclination for self-doubt. I asked several close business associates to employ key words to describe Harrison McCain. I heard “energy,” “determined,” “strong leader,” “headstrong,” “inspir- ing,” “charismatic,” “innovator,” “at times unreasonable,” but I never heard once “self-doubt” or “unsure of his abilities.””
“of gasoline, initially Primrose, and later Irving Oil. I once asked his son Arthur Irving why his father got into the oil and gas business. His answer: “Because he was selling automobiles and cars need oil and gas to run. Why give that business to someone else?” The logic does not end there – if it makes sense to sell oil and gasoline, then it also makes sense to build a refinery, and, if it makes sense to build a refinery, then it also makes sense to build ships to transport oil and gasoline from the refinery.8 That lesson would not be lost on Harrison McCain. K.C. Irving’s entrepreneurship skills were anchored in a few but”
“K.C. Irving was a master of vertical integration. Why sell someone else’s gasoline when you have an automobile dealership and service stations and when you can refine it yourself? One of his grandsons explains, “One company building and buying from or selling to one another and building a base that would allow you to export or expand into new markets and new products elsewhere. It was good then, and today it’s still just as good for us.”9 Another of K.C. Irving’s firm beliefs was in work, focus, work, and”
“today it’s still just as good for us.” Another of K.C. Irving’s firm beliefs was in work, focus, work, and work some more. His son Arthur Irving told me that his father had no sense of time and had incredible energy. He could outwork and out- last people thirty years younger. Harrison McCain once observed that K.C. Irving had “great energy, wonderful energy. Never got tired.””
“after Harrison and raising her newborn son Mark and daughter Ann. But Harrison was growing restless and could not let go of his desire to start his own business. He explained, “You know, I thought I was going to walk into a place and see a place to buy some day or a place I could offer to buy, and lo and behold I’d be in business. And it dawned on me one day that I was too busy doing too many things for that to happen, and that I had to make it happen. So I quit the job. So I had no job and no money, and I had to find a business.” K.C. Irving pressed”
“but by the time he left there were twenty-five. Wallace spent a great deal of time with Harrison and Billie while in Saint John. The topic of conversation, more often than not, was how to go into business for themselves. They both wanted to follow in their father’s footsteps. They looked at different possibilities – opening a hardware store, a dry cleaning business, and even buying a seat on the Toronto or Montreal Exchange. They could not, however, settle on what direction they should take. Harrison’s decision to throw caution to the wind and quit Irving Oil forced the issue for him. After all, start- ing his own business had always been his overriding objective.”
“for Harrison. Bob knew that Carleton County potato farmers were shipping a lot of potatoes to the Birds Eye plant in Maine that processed them into frozen french fries. He felt that there was something promising there, something worth exploring, and he was right. Fast food restaurants with french fries as a central focus were slowly making their pres- ence felt. McDonald’s, Burger King, A&W, Kentucky Fried Chicken all appeared in the mid-1950s in the United States, and the list has kept growing ever since, as did their demands for french fries. Fast food outlets had arrived to stay and they were grabbing a large share of the restaurant food market.25 Bob suggested to Harrison that the time was ripe for a home-grown”
“solve that potential problem. Harrison had what he had long hoped for. He was in business for himself with his brothers. There would be immense challenges ahead, but the new business had a number of advantages. The fast food busi- ness, with its heavy reliance on french fries, was about to take flight and change the food-restaurant business. In addition, governments were poised to play a far greater interventionist role in the economy. Harrison with his brothers, particularly Wallace, would ride these two advantages in building their multi-billion-dollar food empire. Both Harrison and Wallace had honed their skills at the feet of a business genius and one of the world’s great entrepreneurs, fellow New Brunswicker, K.C. Irving. Both remained forever grateful to him – but now they were on their own, hoping to emulate their mentor’s success.”
“told him that he was crazy. The money the brothers had invested wouldn’t, however, get them far. Nor did they have access to the expertise they so sorely needed. It certainly did not exist anywhere in Carleton County or, for that matter, in Canada. All they had was the raw material – potatoes. However, the quality of the local potatoes was in question, at least when compared to Idaho potatoes, which were considered more suited to the frozen food business. Nor was there yet a market in the three Maritime provinces for frozen food, and the large markets were thousands of miles away. Then there was transportation to consider, a daunting problem in the late 1950s, especially for moving frozen food. The transportation infra- structure and industry in New Brunswick in the late 1950s were both lacking on many fronts, particularly when it concerned frozen food. They also lacked financial resources.”
“thing. Building one from scratch was quite another. By the time Wallace arrived, the McCain brothers had a fair idea of the challenges ahead. Yet neither Harrison nor Wallace ever lost faith. I once asked Harrison if he ever regretted leaving a secure, well-paying job with Irving. “Christ, no,” he said, “no sense looking back. We were in it and that was that. Best years of our lives, best years of our lives.””
“game and attracting private sector jobs away from their own region. It was Flemming’s turn not to be outdone. He established the New Brunswick Industrial Board in 1956, and McCain Foods was the board’s very first project. It handed out its first two loans or bond guaran- tees to McCain Foods – one for the construction of the plant and the second for cold storage. The assistance was for twenty years at a 5 per cent interest. They were the first of many loans, loan guarantees, and grants McCain Foods would receive from the provincial and federal governments as they grew their business.11”
“getting going In many ways securing funds and tax concessions was the easy part. The entire project would fail miserably if they didn’t get some high- level expertise in the frozen food industry onside – and quickly. Harrison and Bob had paid a few brief visits to a frozen food plant in Maine, but that had mostly shown them how much they didn’t know.”
“But growing potatoes and producing frozen french fries are two vastly different things. The risks were high, knowledge of the sector was virtually non- existent, and Carleton County had no expertise in building, let alone managing a frozen food plant. Youth, energy, and raw ambition were about to come face-to-face with a daunting challenge in an environ- ment that provided little help. Reading about the early months at McCain Foods essentially speaks to an exercise in improvisation, of attempts at trying this and that to see what would work. First on the agenda was to find a site for the plant. Second was to build it. Third was to acquire the machinery and make it work. Fourth, hire staff. Fifth, make the freezing process work and ensure quality. Sixth, identify and pursue markets. All in all, a daunting agenda for two men still in their twenties, with no experi- ence in the sector.”
“Asked to explain his business success, Harrison said, in his typically succinct way, “Good timing, good luck, right place.”15 He would repeat this mantra time and time again whenever the question was broached. As for expertise, Harrison and Wallace once again got lucky when”
“production line in the plant. However, Pierson had a genius for coming up with innovative solu- tions and inventing machinery. He single-handedly developed a steam”
“of the McCain family, believe me.” Harrison and Wallace also learned management by doing, by try- ing this and that, and by sharing information freely. They had no for- mal training, no management school training, and certainly no MBA degree. What they knew about management they had learned from K.C. Irving. Like him, they would lead by example, put in long hours, improvise when necessary, look a few years down the road, manage by suggestion, and give wide flexibility to their managers and staff to operate the way they saw fit. Harrison was never one to draft a memo when a phone call or a brief visit would do. They hired competent staff, no small feat in Florenceville, far from”
