This is a story about a man from a small community who, together with his brothers, built a global empire. Harrison McCain was a leading entrepreneur of the last century. He had all of the strengths of a great entrepreneur and some of the weaknesses as well. He was bold and decisive, and, if needed, could hold a meeting in his own mind, without need for others to help make a decision. The meetings never lasted long, but they produced decisions and results. Though the early years at McCain Foods were particularly challenging, he seldom had time or inclination for...

History matters in all things, and economic development is certainly no exception. To be sure, even entrepreneurship is not born in a vacuum. Institutional settings are also important to promoting business development, as Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson persuasively argue in their widely readWhy Nations Fail.¹ They make the case that inclusive political and economic institutions are key to promoting social cohesion and economic prosperity. Anglo-American democracies have often led the way, down through the ages, in developing inclusive political and economic institutions. This explains in no small measure the economic successes of the United States, the United...

Harrison McCain had anything but a typical New Brunswick childhood. His father, A.D. McCain, having been denied the chance to become a doctor, had picked up where his own father had left off and now had a thriving potato business. Harrison’s mother, Laura, a strong-willed former school teacher, attached a great deal of importance to education. Unlike the majority of his peers, Harrison and his sisters and brothers all went to university.

Harrison grew up in a household where business was a regular topic of discussion and where doing well at school was simply expected. He entered first grade in...

Americans call it chutzpah, central Canadians call it guts, while Maritimers call it balls. Call it what you may, Harrison McCain was the king of it. He was never late for anything. Once, impeccably dressed, his shirt crisp, his tie expensive, Harrison was waiting for a dinner companion in upscale Scott’s restaurant in London’s fashionable Mayfair district when he was approached by a snobbish looking older man, who had just come in with a much younger woman. Assuming that Harrison was the head waiter, he requested a quiet table. Rising to the occasion, Harrison found one that met their wishes,...

Harrison McCain finally had what he had long wanted: a business to start, a chance to compete in the marketplace, to grow, and hopefully to turn a handsome profit. Admittedly, Harrison had a leg-up – an inheritance from his father, and brothers willing to lend a helping hand. As noted earlier, all four brothers invested part of their inheritance in the business, and two were directly involved: his younger brother Wallace, and his elder brother Bob. Bob provided both key support and advice, particularly in the early months. Harrison and Wallace, as we have seen, also had countless discussions about...

The Florenceville plant was up and running, though the opening had been delayed by several months. Construction problems and difficulties in finding the right machinery, often second hand, had pushed back opening day from October to late February. October would have been much better because it would have coincided with the potato harvest. But, finally, the McCain boys were open for business. They had a production line operating and staffed with forty people, mostly from Florenceville and surrounding farms and mostly women. Overnight, McCain Foods became Florenceville’s largest employer. The McCain brothers had delivered on the promise to start a...

Frank McKenna observed, “Harrison McCain was a globalist before the word was invented.”¹ Harrison simply concluded that if he was in the frozen french fries business, then his job was to buy potatoes where people grew them, process them, and sell them where people eat them.² He was always one to simplify things, and he had seen his father explore new markets in England and Latin America some fifty years before.

Much as there never had been a question of whether Harrison and Wallace would launch their own business, there had also been no question of their pursuing distant markets....

There was still the large market in the United States beckoning. And Florenceville would remain the anchor from which a game plan would be developed.

Florenceville and New Brunswick were constants in Harrison’s life. As time went on, McCain Foods experimented with many new products, some of which failed to get out of the gate, such as salmon pies and chicken and chips. Harrison had a strict business approach to all new products: if they failed to turn a profit or gain market share within a certain period of time, they were gone, end of story, and on to something...

As we have seen, for twenty-five years governance was not on the radar screen for Harrison and Wallace, nor did there seem to be any reason why it should be. This attitude, as we have also seen, is not uncommon in family-owned businesses, especially in the first generation. The story has recently become quite different, however, for publicly traded firms.

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 forced publicly traded firms in the United States to comply with new corporate governance and transparency requirements.¹ Canada and many other countries were soon to follow.²

The act came in response to a series of...

Harrison McCain was rarely one to speak disparagingly of others. Even when asked for his opinion of competitors or of politicians whose views he didn’t share, a typical response was, “Good fella, good fella,” and then he would go on to talk about his dealings with them. Only twice did I hear otherwise. Once when I mentioned an article in which a well-known Canadian businessman had referred to “his good friend Harrison McCain,” Harrison replied, “A goddamn crook, a goddam crook.” On another occasion, he unloaded on a businessman who, he believed, lacked integrity in his dealings with him, with...

In his interview with James Downey, Harrison was asked, “Has the trajectory of McCain Foods been affected by the dispute with Wallace and the family?”

Harrison’s reply was a brief no.

Downey persevered: “That has not had any serious affect at all?”

Harrison responded, “No. That doesn’t mean that Wallace wasn’t doing a lot of work and he’s very effective too. He knows what he’s doing and he’s a smart guy.”¹

The growth of McCain Foods did not end in 1993–94. In fact, it continues to this day. The company generated $3 billion in 1993, and $5 billion in...

Percy Mockler, a rookie Tory member of the New Brunswick Legislative Assembly, received a telephone call from Harrison McCain shortly after the 1982 election. Mockler knew, of course, that McCain Foods was the region’s dominant employer, but he had never met Harrison. Nervously, Mockler took the call.

Harrison was calling to congratulate him and to say that since Mockler was representing the region, they would likely be working together. Mockler thanked him for the call and said, “Look, I have just run an election campaign and met a lot of potato farmers. I know a great deal about the potato...

A wise elderly Acadian woman once remarked to me that there is only so much oxygen in any room and that some people consume more oxygen than others. Harrison McCain was one of them. He had presence in the way a great actor has presence. He could hold sway in a room by the sheer force of his personality. Bob Crossman told me that this could be intimidating, and David O’Brien said, “If you put twenty people in a room who had never met each other before and Harrison was one of them, within an hour, there would be a...

Harrison’s stock response when asked for the secret of his success was that it was no secret at all: “Right time, right place, good luck.” When pressed by friends, however, he was willing to elaborate. He told James Downey, “The first requirement to be successful, in my opinion, is single-mindedness of purpose. And I don’t think the professors that teach kids who want to be a great success in their field point it out to them with enough vigour and say, ‘Do you understand? You have to sacrifice. You have to make difficult choices and say, “Goddamn it, I said...