Harrison McCain

"Harrison McCain, regarding the McCain fleet of aircraft. “Stan,” McCain told him. “I cannot give you the numbers that justify these aircraft, but I could not build this empire without them.”"

"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"

"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"

"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.”"

"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"

"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"

"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-"

"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."

"One, he had a style, he had a style all his own. I’ve never seen the like of it in all my life. I must have heard him, but I can’t recall an example of him ever giving me a direct order, “Harrison, here’s what I want you to do on Thursday. Go down and see Jack and do this, this, this and this.” Maybe it happened, probably happened, but I can’t recall it. Mr Irving ran the business with his top people by suggestion. His style. He’d make a suggestion that if we had such-and-such an account, that would fit in just exactly what our expenses and our business plans in buying this flat area, and that would be the cornerstone for a new location. And if we got that, that would convince me that we should go ahead and spend the money and get the damn thing going. If we could just find some- body that could just talk the fellows into swinging that damn deal around. And what that meant was, get your ass out there and get that account.16"

"knew that better than anyone.” Harrison also admired how K.C. Irving managed his public image, because it, along with his reputation, was crucial to his business suc- cess. Harrison maintained that, because K.C. Irving never gave inter- views, people simply believed that he had little interest in projecting a public image. Harrison insisted that nothing could be further from the truth. K.C. Irving knew better than anyone the role a public image has in business and how to manage it. Irving cultivated the image of a tough, demanding, shrewd, austere, tireless, sober, secretive, no- nonsense businessman, never to be outgunned. “Christ,” Harrison explained, “when K.C. Irving walked in to negotiate a business deal, the competition was already ready to give up and say I can’t compete with this guy. The competitor would lose before the competition began because everyone knew that you could never beat K.C. Irving.” Harrison admired K.C.’s management style, which he said was based"

"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"

"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.”"

"Harrison left a well-paid, high-profile sales manager job working with one of Canada’s business giants. No job, no salary, and a wife and new- born son and daughter at home. No business to go to, just an obses- sive desire to start one. The problem – he had no idea what to start. ­Harrison’s chutzpah once again rose to meet the occasion. Joining the family business was not an option. The potato business"

"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"

"this mantra time and time again whenever the question was broached. As for expertise, Harrison and Wallace once again got lucky when they learned that a pioneer in the business was living just down the road from them, working for H.C. Baxter in Houlton, Maine. Olof Pierson would earn the label “the father of the frozen French fried potato.”16 Pierson was an eccentric, MIT-trained, chain-smoking, hard- drinking, absent-minded inventor. He earned a master’s degree in aeronautical engineering from MIT in 1932, and while serving in the American army during the Second World War he was given the task of working out how to dehydrate potatoes for the armed services. His success led to his joining H.C. Baxter, where he continued his work on processing potatoes, first in canned goods and later in freezing them as french fries. He invented and drove the process and indeed was dir- ectly responsible for the first package of frozen french fries sold in 1947 by the Birds Eye Company.17 He later became an independent consult- ant in the frozen food business. McCain Foods was an early client, and later he advised the United Nations Food Organization. Pierson had the run of the place on the technical side with McCain"

"off other machines like bullets.” Harrison and his brother Bob had made notes of the machines and freezers in use when they visited the plant in Maine. The problem was that money was short, so the McCains searched for machines that they could get second-hand. They were able, for example, to buy freez- ing equipment from a Quebec firm. They also acquired second-hand boilers from a plant in Ontario and machines to cut potatoes from California. They bought new machines only when they had no choice. Pierson went over the machines as they arrived and adapted them, when necessary, to operate a frozen french fries line.21 Since many of the machines had to be modified, they often had to be"

"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"

"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."

"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"

"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."

"take a decision that the advantages of moving quickly were often lost. There would be no such problem with McCain Foods. Decisions were quickly made and it was also acceptable to make mistakes, provided one learned from them. Morris explained, “If you were wrong, you got a heck of an education and you probably didn’t make that mistake again. If you were right, you were so far ahead of everybody else and it was a major coup for the company.”24 The McCain brothers and Morris hired staff that were of like mind."

"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.”"

"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."

"Foods because no one else knew how to build and operate a frozen food processing plant. He went to work improvising, sketching plans on the back of cigarette packages, thinking how the production process would work, and designing new machinery. Wallace explained that Pierson “had it all in his head,” never one to outline elaborate plans, preferring to solve problems on the spot.18 Harrison and Wallace were dependent on Pierson’s work. Once Pierson had put together plans for the plant, Wallace took his"

"to the what, the when, and the who. Harrison and Wallace had raw ambition, youth, energy, and an exceptionally strong work ethic. Both had gained invaluable business experience working under the ever-watchful eye of K.C. Irving. They also picked a fortuitous time to get into the frozen food business. The fast food industry was still in its infancy, but rapidly gaining momen- tum. Canada’s population was well into a growth spurt fuelled by the baby boom of the postwar period and the arrival of many new Can- adians. More important still, women were joining the workforce at an increasing rate. Two-income families meant eating out often and also easy-to-prepare meals to eat at home. Frozen french fries were a cru- cial ingredient of both. But launching a frozen food firm required a great deal more than"

"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"