Irving

The establishment, progress, and financial success of the Irving Group of Companies is one of the greatest, and perhaps the most unusual, of all corporate accomplishments in Canadian economic history. By the early 1990s this group included thousands of Irving automobile service stations in eastern Canada and northeastern United States, transport companies, forest industry operations, pulp and paper mills, newspaper, radio, and TV companies, Canada’s largest oil refinery, a modern shipyard, and the first deep-water terminal in the western hemisphere.

During his lifetime, K.C. Irving was quick to share credit with his sons and associates for the amazing development of his organization and its many companies. They, however, were equally quick to emphasize that K.C. Irving was the person primarily responsible for the remarkable growth of their corporate colossus. His father, J.D. Irving, a well-established businessman, may have been a role model but from earliest days k.C. Irving was fiercely independent, first as a young boy running small business ventures in his home town and from the mid-1920s onward, as the overall enterprise grew, as its dynamic force, its master strategist and guiding influence.

Early in his life, young K.C. Irving demonstrated that he liked a challenge as had his great-grandfather, George Irving, who had sailed from Scotland for Canada across the howling Atlantic in 1822. Settling in 1826 in the Eastern section of New Brunswick in the area that was organized as Kent County, George Irving built a home and cleared 200 acres of land. When he arrived, New Brunswick was still largely underdeveloped with a population of some 70,000 people of European descent in an area of 28,000 square miles. Life was difficult and only those with self-reliance and hardihood were able to get ahead. George Irving had these qualities and bequeathed them to his descendants.

By the beginning of the twentieth century, J.D. Irving was operating a sawmill in Buctouche, a village on Northumberland Strait, on New Brunswick’s east coast north of Moncton. The main commercial activities there were fishing, lumbering, and ship building. J.D. Irving gradually extended his business activities in Buctouche to include a general store, grist and carding mills, and farm and fish products marketing. He became a well-respected member of the Buctouche community, particularly among his fellow Presbyterians whose disciplined religious values he shared.

K.C. Irving was born in Buctouche on March 14, 1899, into the business and Presbyterian traditions which were central in the lives of his father and ancestors. During young Irving’s formative years, automobiles were gradually becoming more widely used. His interest in automobiles and in other mechanical devices grew as he matured and was heightened during the time he served in the Royal Flying Corps in World War I. Before he entered the military he had studied for a time in Nova Scotia’s Dalhousie and Acadia universities. But practical business affairs were of primary interest to him, and after the war he gained a considerable reputation in Buctouche as an automobile mechanic.

By the early 1920s he was operating a profitable gas station and Ford dealership as an extension to the Irving General Store. Soon he established in Buctouche his own garage and service station, the first in town. He sold Imperial Oil products as its agent in Kent County. When Imperial withdrew his right to sell their products he began in July 1924 to import gasoline and lubricating oil from the United States. This was a key step in the development of the Irving Group of Companies.

Founder of an empire that encompassed pulp and paper, oil refining, publishing and broadcasting, K.C. Irving was New Brunswick’s first modern-day entrepreneurial industrialist. Inducted into the Canadian Business Hall of Fame in 1979, Mr. Irving was not so much motivated by the making of money as he was in the creating of businesses [J.D. Irving Limited].

In 1925 the Ford Motor Company granted Irving its dealership for the city of Saint John and the surrounding county. K.C. Irving Limited was incorporated that year and Irving Oil Company Limited four years later. Saint John became the centre of his developing business interests. Bus and truck companies were acquired and new routes were opened.

As his network of service stations and transportation routes developed, his company built its own stations and service depots. He acquired the Saint John Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company and built his own oil tankers.Soon his company was assembling vessels for other oil companies including Exxon and Shell. In partnership with Standard Oil of California, K.C. Irving completed construction of an oil refinery in Saint John in 1960. His shipbuilding company subsequently secured the prime contract for the Canadian Patrol Frigate Program.

When his father died in 1933, K.C. Irving had acquired J.D. Irving, Limited, the family lumber company. Five years later he purchased Canada Veneers, another company in the wood products field. It manufactured fuselages for Mosquito fighter aircraft during World War II. At the end of the war Irving acquired the New Brunswick Railway Company which, although it had no rolling stock, held large stands of timber. Gradually his timber holdings were extended in North America. K.C. Irving took a personal interest in the establishment of the company’s first reforestation in the province of New Brunswick. By the late 1970s millions of trees had been planted to reflect his growing environmental interest in the future of his home province.

In the mid-1950s, K.C. Irving took a step that was to see him recognized as a reforestation leader in North America. He lived to see his own company plant over 300 million trees in New Brunswick in a program widely praised as pioneering reforestation and environmental progress [J.D. Irving Ltd.]

One of the strategic decisions taken by K.C. Irving was to concentrate on the development of his business interests in New Brunswick and nearby jurisdictions. By the 1960s his companies gave employment to about eight percent of the entire labour force in New Brunswick and this figure continues to grow. His newspapers, radio, and TV stations were primary sources of news and information.

The Irving organization has been the subject of vigorous criticism for the extent of its economic influence in New Brunswick. But thoughtful analysts are keenly aware that the Irving Group of Companies has provided and continues to provide employment for thousands of individuals and, through them, financial support for their families in an area in which high unemployment has been and continues to be a profound problem. Through the widespread employment it provides, the Irving Group of Companies helps to alleviate that primary problem. It has done and is doing more than this. K.C. Irving and his companies have stimulated many enterprising young men. Various senior executives who have moved to other organizations completed their business apprenticeships serving the Irving conglomerate.

Early in his life, K.C. Irving learned that, through rigorous personal discipline and continuing intelligent action to secure desirable goals, an individual can be successful and help others in the process. In the financial dimensions of business, he learned from his father and, through his own experience, that, to succeed financially, income must exceed expense month by month and year by year. When this occurs the surplus can then be carefully invested in the development of an enterprise or invested in a brand-new undertaking. In short, careful attention to financial details allows money to be used to make more money.

K.C. Irving’s careful learning of these lessons and his application of them were key elements in the financial and corporate success he came to enjoy. In addition, of course, he knew that he must use every moment carefully.Time must not be wasted because time, in a money civilization, is a primary factor in achieving success. When time is invested carefully, new opportunities for the advancement of a business can likewise be seized to advantage. Thus K.C. Irving numbered his days and applied the wisdom he gained in the development of his business enterprise. He bequeathed a great heritage to those who have come after him just as his ancestors had left him a most valuable cultural and business inheritance.

The Irving Group of Companies is now in the capable hands of K.C. Irving’s three sons: James K. Irving, Arthur L. Irving, and John E. Irving and their associates.