There are only three times when a gentleman should be mentioned in the press according to ancient etiquette: when he is born, the day he marries and the announcement of his death. With rare exceptions--his kidnapping in 1982 being a prime instance--Jack Irving, the quietest of the late K.C. Irving’s three media shy sons, ascribed to that adage rigorously.
The billionaire industrialist, who had been in failing health for several months, died in St. Joseph’s Hospital on Wednesday July 21 in St. John, New Brunswick, the city where he was born, raised and which he called home for all of his 78 years. He is survived by his wife Suzanne, three children, six grandchildren and his older brothers James and Arthur, none of whom was willing to break the pattern to speak about him for his obituary. And why should they? The family owned newspaper, the Telegraph-Journal, conveyed the message in copious detail that Irving was a man who was “intelligent and confident, yet humble about the extent of his own accomplishment,” and who embodied “strength of character, vision and integrity.”
Nevertheless, the truth is pretty close to that encomium.
Donald Savoie
Elizabeth Parr-Johnston
Minister of Energy.
John Ernest (Jack) Irving was born Jan. 1, 1932, the youngest of industrialist K. C. Irving’s three sons. The family empire dates back to
Colin Irving (March 14, 1899-) Mother was Harriet MacNarin, from nearby Galloway. They met while she was working in the Irving family store in Buctouche, married in the late 1920s and quickly had three sons, James ((1929), Arthur (1931) and John E. (1932) who eventually all settled into executive spots in the Irving organization.
From his father’s lumber business, he branched out in the 1920s as a Model-T Ford salesman in his home town of Buctouche, N.B. and then became the agent for an oil company so that he could sell customers a vehicle and the fuel to keep it running. Financed with a $2,000 bank loan, he went into competition with the oil company and formed the Irving Oil Company in 1924, which eventually morphed into service stations, bus lines, highway franchises, oil tankers and refineries, all of which required his petroleum products. After his fa
By 1960 Irving had built a business empire in oil, lumber, transportation, mining and smelting interests in eastern Canada, stretching as far west as Montreal, that employed nearly 13,000 people and which was valued at $400,000.
“No one has yet found a wholly logical explanation for Irving’s phenomenal success,” the late journalist Ralph Allen wrote in a series of articles in Maclean’s in 1964.
The Irving name was everywhere in New Brunswick, front and centre in the bold red white and blue diamond emblem on gas stations throughout the province and behind the scenes but nonetheless in control of most broadcast and print media in the province. The 1970 report of the Special Senate Committee into ownership and control of the mass media described the Irving empire as “about as flagrant an example of abusing the public interest as you’re likely to find in Canada.”
Born on Jan. 1, 1932, Irving learned about business at an early age. When he was eight, he joined his brothers to form the Jim, Art and Jack Farm, raising chickens in their backyard and selling eggs.
They began with a dozen chickens. Six years later, they had more than 1,500.
He attended Rothesay Collegiate, a private boys' school near Saint John, where he was nicknamed “Gassy.” He played guard for the basketball team, captained the rugby team and was a chess champion. According to the school yearbook, his destiny was listed as “$25 million.”
His father raised him and his two brothers to be teetotallers and all three underwent a “stern and unrelenting apprenticeship” in different branches of the family businesses, according to a 1959 article in the Atlantic Advocate.
In 1952, at his father's request, he joined his family's businesses where he worked alongside his brother Arthur at Irving Oil. He began managing construction and engineering projects, including retail outlets, bulk plants, and other major infrastructure.
