Irving Oil

"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"

"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."

"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"