Midas of the Maritimes

Flames curled through a straw-and-cloth effigy hanging in the main square of normally sedate Saint John, New Brunswick. Hundreds of onlookers gathered to watch the fire and to argue about the object of their anger: Kenneth Colin Irving, the richest man, the biggest landholder and the most contentious entrepreneur in Canada's Maritime Provinces.

K. C. Irving last week was up to his bald crown in one of the longest labor disputes yet witnessed by economically depressed New Brunswick. It began 19 weeks ago, when 145 members of the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers International Union stomped out of Irving's $52 million Saint John refinery protesting that their hourly wages--$1.55 to $2.30--were 75-c- below the industry's average in Canada. The walkout has since spread westward to other parts of the Irving Oil Co. Labor views the Saint John strike as a battle of principle to extend standard industry wages and labor practices to Irving's many companies, but few of the real issues of the strike or its nasty incidents have been reported in New Brunswick. One reason: four of the province's six daily newspapers, one of Saint John's two radio stations and the city's only TV station are owned by K. C. Irving.

Up from the Garden. With a fortune approaching $300 million, Irving dominates much of the Maritimes. He owns the biggest hardware chain in the region, the public transit system in Saint John, 1,700,000 acres of woodlands, several mines, a steel fabricating plant, a shipyard, 16 tankers and 2,000 service stations that blazon the Irving name in red, white and blue from Newfoundland to Quebec. Almost everyone in New Brunswick has strong feelings--pro or con--about K. C. Irving. But he has so effectively walled himself from the public that few really know him.

The son of a lumberman and storekeeper in tiny Buctouche, N.B. (pop. 1,000), K. C. Irving early demonstrated the Midas touch. At five he sold the produce of his backyard garden (2-c- per cucumber); at ten he marketed the foil saved up from tea packages (4-c- per lb.). As a young man he sold Model Ts, and Fords led him logically to gas pumps. He started Irving Oil by installing a 10,000-gal. gasoline tank in his home town. From there, oil guided him into bus lines, tankers and refining.

Over the Pump. At 64, Irving runs his businesses like fiefs, delegating bits of authority only to his three sons, who range in age from 32 to 36. Like their father, they work up to 18 hours a day, do not smoke or drink, have little small talk or social life. K.C. operates out of a second-story walkup above a service station in Saint John, and all four Irvings lunch together at K.C.'s white frame house because, as he says, "we just don't get enough time to talk at the office." On his many trips to the empire's outposts, Irving fires off questions and orders that show the control he keeps over even minor details. "Put another spotlight on that Irving sign," he will say as he drives along.

Many Canadians applaud Irving for having created more jobs in New Brunswick than all of Canada's many official pump-priming projects. His critics counter that he got labor cheap and has kept it cheap, that he takes no part in community activities and does not even permit his workers to make payroll contributions to the United Fund--it costs too much time for his clerks to figure out the deductions. Irving has also shown a knack for breaking strikes in the past. But even those who would like to take K. C. Irving down a peg realize that what really hurts this stubborn tycoon is bound also to hurt New Brunswick's fragile economy. New Brunswick would be happy to settle for a compromise--but that word, up to now, has never been a part of K. C. Irving's vocabulary.

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