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The following excerpt is from Donald J. Savoie’s Harrison McCain: Single-Minded Purpose.
Harrison McCain’s house sits perched on top of the hill in West Florenceville. From where he sat for breakfast, he could easily see the McCain Foods plant, the small Anglican Church, which he attended, the Bank of Nova Scotia, the school, the housing development built for McCain employees, and the community library built to honour his parents. In one brief glimpse, Harrison could survey all that mattered to him.
The community has all the strengths and weaknesses of a small town. Everyone knows everyone. It is a very tight-knit community where looking out for others is commonplace. While in Florenceville, in December 2012, a resident flagged me down at the entrance of the narrow wooden bridge, where everyone has to slow to a crawl before crossing it. He had spotted the safety inspection sticker on my windshield, which had expired several months earlier. With a friendly smile and a quick wave of the hand asking me to roll down my window, he told me, “Better get that inspection done or you will have to pay a $170 fine.” I doubt if someone in Moncton, let alone Toronto, would have bothered.
There are no shopping centres in Florenceville, and when looking for a restaurant, one has to drive to Centreville, some fifteen kilometres up the road. The restaurant you will find is 1950s vintage with the benches, furniture, and menu of that era. If you like hot chicken with gravy and french fries, this is the restaurant for you. The only thing missing is the old jukebox. The easy rapport between staff and customers would be unusual in larger centres, where most would be strangers to one another.
The people of Carleton County are comfortable in this environment. It is the way of a small, rural farming community. They see no need for fancy restaurants or, for that matter, for change. They are competitive only when they have to be. Yet it is from this unlikely spot that the McCain brothers were able to build their multi-billion-dollar global firm, now employing some twenty thousand people. It houses fifty-five production facilities in twelve countries and processes 450,000 kilograms of potato products every hour. It accounts for about one-third of all frozen french fries sold in the world and sells its products in 110 countries.
The McCain business acumen can be traced back to when the first McCains left Ireland for the New World. Andrew McCain, along with his brother James, left a hamlet north of Castlefin, in Ireland’s County Donegal, in the 1820s, before the Great Potato Famine, to settle in New Brunswick, one of the British North American colonies. Their sister Jane joined them a year later. Harrison McCain speculates that the brothers left Ireland so that they could own and cultivate their own land, tired of working as tenant farmers. Within a few years of their arrival, the brothers had purchased 300 hectares of land and began work on it. The McCains have continued to work the land to this day.
McCain Foods ranks thirteenth among the largest private companies in Canada. McCain also operates one of the largest trucking firms in Canada, Day and Ross. McCain’s head office remains in Florenceville, though pressure to move at least portions of it to larger centres, notably Toronto, has been unremitting.
This book is Harrison McCain’s story. Knowing Harrison, I am sure he would have wanted his story to be cast in a broad setting. He would not have been content with a simple chronicle of the growth of McCain Foods. He would have wanted to pass on to aspiring entrepreneurs the lessons he had learned, including his own experience in the economic development of his beloved New Brunswick and the other Maritime provinces. He would have welcomed debate on the role of government in society and the state of partisan politics, not only in his province, but in the rest of Canada. He strongly believed in partisan politics but he was never blind to its shortcomings.
I write this for several reasons but mainly to indicate that Harrison McCain had myriad interests. He was a classic example of an old saying: “If you need to get something done, ask someone who is busy.” Harrison had a hand in many things and was always available to give advice. I once telephoned him to ask if he had any suggestion for me, as I was about to replace him on the advisory committee of the Order of Canada. His reply: “Yup, yup, two things, two things. One, do not give the order to a person of the cloth. Their reward is in the next life. Two, do not give it to a businessman who has only made money. That’s the easy part. Give it to a businessman who has given back to his community. That’s the test. How in the hell are you, anyway?” Business first, pleasure after, with Harrison McCain.
To learn more about Harrison McCain, or to order online, click here.
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This was exactly the book I was looking for to use as a predictive resource for strategic decision making purposes. Bravo mr. Donald SAVOIE on yet another truly original and enlightening book, congratulations on a job very well done.