Family Reputation as Credit Line

“period, or before the cash ran out. The first order of business was to find money to build the plant and the cold storage facility. They did what many aspiring entrepreneurs do – they sought help from a bank. In their case, they went to the local branch of the Bank of Nova Scotia, the bank that their father and grandfather had done business with, and applied for a line of credit of $150,000. As luck would have it, the bank’s president, Horace Inman, was visit- ing the branch while Harrison and Wallace were making their pitch. Inman spotted them, went over to introduce himself, asked who they were and why they were there. The brothers gave him a brief outline of their business plan. Inman told Harrison and Wallace to sit tight and wait for a few minutes. Very shortly he came out of the branch man- ager’s office and told them that they had the money and were now in business. Inman knew the McCain family from his time as bank super- visor in New Brunswick. He explained, “Your grandfather did business with this bank. He owed this bank a lot of money, and when he owed it he was broke. But your father paid all the money back. We never lost a nickel from any McCain.”1 Despite the line of credit and the $100,000 the McCain brothers”

“felt that Harrison was making a bad mistake. Harrison finally decided to go for it and to use $30,000 of his inherit- ance in the venture. In his interview with Downey, he said that when he left Irving Oil to start a business, he was “working full time with- out pay for myself.” Although he had talked at length about going into business with his brother Wallace, “I wasn’t representing the two of us. I paid my own bills, he wasn’t paying half. I looked after myself.”27 Still, Harrison did tell Wallace what he planned to do and asked if he wanted in the business. Wallace responded, “You go ahead and start and we’ll see how it goes. I’ll help you all I can, I’ll put some money in and see if it’s big enough for the two of us, and I’ll see what I’m going to do.” Harrison’s response: “No, no, come right now. Come right now. Don’t fool around, just make up your mind.”28 Wallace then became the second McCain to leave an Irving business. He gave six months’ notice, and during that time Harrison and Bob laid the groundwork for the new business. They visited large frozen- food producers in the United States and tried to identify potential dis- tributors in Canada. Still Harrison later reported that everyone felt that “we were stupid. It was the wrong thing to do, but I think the more negatives we heard, the more positive we became that we wanted to go into it.”29 Initially the thinking was that each of the four brothers should invest”