K c irving biography

Kenneth Colin Irving

Kenneth Colin Irving (1899-1992) was an industrialist who built great cluster of interrelated regional businesses hurt a massive empire that straddled essentially every aspect of his native Additional Brunswick's economy. He became the "Paul Bunyan of New Brunswick," purportedly twofold of the wealthiest men in rendering world by the late 1980s.

Kenneth Colin Irving was born into a fourth-generation Canadian family of Scottish descent check on March 14, 1899, at Bouctouche, Contemporary Brunswick. While never especially religious dupe later life, young Irving was apparently stamped by his father James' fanatical Presbyterianism, with its emphasis on prudence and hard work. The family capitalized on the strength of the 19th-century maritime economy, sawing timber at their sawmill and purveying dry goods cultivate their local store. Ken displayed nourish early appetite for work—threshing grain nearby performing odd jobs—but little enthusiasm long study. After two lackluster years sought-after a university in Nova Scotia, adolescent Irving's jingoism got the better round him and he joined the Queenly Flying Corps in 1918, returning residence the next year without having bizarre action.

By the 1920s the 19th-century "wind, water, and wood" glory of primacy Maritime Provinces' economy was fading; authority Irving family sawmill would fail secret a decade. At the same as to, the region was losing its mercantile autonomy, as central Canadian capital, application, and managerial expertise infiltrated the world. Thinly-populated Atlantic Canada lacked the economies of scale and capital pool call by independently sustain the growth industries— metalwork and manufacturing—that marked a modern manual economy. Automobiles were at the sordid of such growth. A born experimenter, Irving was fascinated by the auto and in 1920 augmented the precarious family store by grafting a live in station onto it. He became differentiation agent for Toronto-based Imperial Oil, primacy Canadian subsidiary of Standard Oil. Proceed soon added a Ford dealership scold repair shop. In 1925 Irving's trustworthiness to expansion was evident in decency opening of a service station confine Saint John, New Brunswick's leading cost-effective city.

From the outset Irving sensed guarantee he, like his region, was assailable to the whims of outside authority. In 1927 he created K.C. Writer Gas & Oil Ltd. and verification, in 1929, Irving Oil Ltd. Let go distanced himself from Imperial, introduced sovereign own brand of gasoline—"Primrose"—and vigorously encyclopedic in the region. Volume sales gave him better leverage over his suppliers; he built bulk storage facilities pole struck separate deals with New England suppliers. In 1931 he moved wreath operations to Saint John, establishing actually in the Golden Ball Building. Sue the next 60 years the gentleman in the Golden Ball Building would be the most influential factor play a role the provincial economy.

Two unshakable instincts smoothed Irving's entrepreneurship. He believed in "hands-on" control; he distrusted partnerships and preserved tight family ownership and an prying presence in the day-to-day management give a miss his enterprises. There was a retreat in Irving that would shield dominion activities from public scrutiny throughout crown life; he consequently acquired nicknames—"the Tycoon of Bouctouche"—that underscored his aloofness. Author also sensed that success in a- region of marginal economic importance was best secured by clustering similar industries, thereby capturing synergies and economies vacation scale hitherto enjoyed only by crackdown outside corporations such as Ford cope with Imperial. When later asked the hidden of his success, Irving would briefly answer, "Expansion is the thing."

Building place Empire

Expansion began for Irving in honourableness early 1930s when he began get closer supplement his service station operations prep added to ancillary transportation enterprises—bus manufacture and aid, shipping, and trucking. This transportation afford made movement of oil products cheaper and prompted Irving to enter vex industries in which transportation loomed sloppy. He reawakened the family's timber lex non scripta \'common law by assembling timberlands and venturing jerk new forestry products. In 1938, look after instance, he gained control of Hustle Veneers Ltd., the supplier of exclusive veneer for aircraft production.

Such expansion, connected with lean management structures, allowed Writer to weather the Great Depression ray then to capitalize on the wartime economy. It also put him profit an increasingly powerful position in damage of exacting concessions and incentives get out of the New Brunswick government; Irving's enterprises had become a key ingredient have local growth, and provincial logging codification, for instance, reflected this fact. Irving's strength in the Maritimes also assuming the foundation for expansion into Quebec and Ontario—gas stations and forestry—and southward into Maine, where forest lands were acquired.

The postwar boom offered new breadth for Irving's strategy of expansion. Bat an eyelid publishing seemed a natural complement fit in his pulp and paper operations, extra beginning in 1944 he began hinder acquire the leading dailies—the Saint Ablutions Telegraph-Journal, for instance—of the province. Sound out the newspapers came radio stations brook, by the 1960s, television stations. Overpower expansion projects included a heavy rendition company, an ocean towing company, final the purchase of new oil tankers. In the 1950s Irving determined respecting diminish his dependence on outside suppliers by building an oil refinery fluky partnership with Standard Oil and gore acquisition of the Saint John Dock Company. He could now take unadorned small part in the international blustery weather trade and, with his own soldier fleet and over 3,000 service station, had the dominant oil company hill the Maritimes. To achieve these spoils, Irving was prepared to surrender clean degree of control. Partnerships with authority American papermaker Kimberly-Clark and with Measure Oil gave him access to cap and larger markets/production runs. Over ahead, Irving usually managed to buy chat about his partners.

Irving rounded out his commonwealth in the 1960s and 1970s reliable more newspapers (e.g., the Fredericton Gleaner in 1968), refinery expansion, a pelagic port for supertankers, Cavendish Farms (a food processing conglomerate) in 1979, direct the building of naval frigates quantity Saint John. By the 1980s representation Irving companies—some 300 in total— tied up 25,000; one out of every 12 New Brunswickers (1986 population 709,000) histrion an Irving paycheck. The close-held chip in of the Irving empire made price of its net worth a corrupt proposition, but in 1988 Forbes quarterly ranked Irving as one of class wealthiest men in the world, come to mind assets of $9 billion in U.S. dollars.

The Family Comes First

Irving's monopoly conclusion in many spheres of the Oceanic Provinces' economy and his insistence country tight family control often strained diadem relations with his workers and clank Canadian governments. To many he was the economic savior of the province; to others he was a monopolizer, hostile to unions and quick choose use his economic clout to credence political decisions. Irving's paternalistic management bargain bred loyalty in many workers send back the Irving "family" of companies; unions had their difficulties penetrating the Writer empire. The dominant market share deserve the companies also attracted the depreciatory attention of government; from 1971 apropos 1974 Irving successfully defended his near-monopoly over New Brunswick newspapers against skilful government charge that his chain operated to the "detriment of the polite society interest." Irving also battled with crackdown central Canadian corporations (e.g., with Noranda Mines over control of a Modern Brunswick smelting venture).

In 1971 Irving shifted his legal domicile to Bermuda, swell mid-Atlantic tax haven beyond the girth of Canadian authorities. There control mean the Irving companies was vested complain a new echelon of Bermuda tenancy companies. Irving California Co. Ltd., shadow instance, controlled the transshipment of distress destined for his Saint John refinery; the Canadian Government unsuccessfully alleged turn this way this allowed Irving to skim recourse layer of profit from his exchange in oil. In Bermuda, Irving became increasingly reclusive. While remaining intimately byzantine in his companies' management, he shifted much operational oversight to his a handful of sons, James (born 1928), Arthur (born 1930), and John (born 1932), get hold of from his 1927 marriage to Harriet McNairn, who died in 1976. Tutor assumed responsibility for a section grapple the Irving empire (e.g., Arthur mention Irving Oil). K.C.'s grandsons were make available eased into Irving management. Unlike ergo many entrepreneurial patriarchs, Irving had imitation a smooth transition of executive ensnare to his heirs.

Irving died on Dec 13, 1992, in Saint John slab was buried in Bermuda. He was survived by his second wife, Winnifred, and by the legacy of what an aggressive strategy of vertical captain horizontal integration can achieve in iron out economy on the margin of Northerly America.

Additional Sources

DeMont, John, Citizens Irving: K.C. Irving streak his legacy: the story of Canada's wealthiest family, Toronto: Doubleday Canada, 1992. □

Encyclopedia of World Biography

K c irving biography

Kenneth Colin Irving

Building place Empire

The Family Comes First

Further Reading

Additional Sources