From the Ground Up - McCain Foods Limited

The Florenceville plant in
winter, early 1970s.
“Without Cedric we could not have built this business,”
says Wallace. “Mostly deals were done by phone,
no big documents needed. There was trust. It helped
that he came from the same province, he knew where we
came from, he understood us and what we were doing.
He knew we were honest and responsible people.”
When Harrison travelled, he carried a letter signed by
Ritchie saying that the Bank of Nova Scotia would honour
a cheque for any amount signed by Harrison McCain.
Bruce Terry tells of the time Harrison flew to Australia to
buy a business for $15 million with a cheque. The Australian
company’s bank said it couldn’t accept a cheque for
such a large amount. Harrison produced Ritchie’s letter,
the banker called Canada, and the cheque was honoured.
Wallace’s son, Michael, who during the 1990s ran McCain’s
U.S. business, used to say that Harrison and Wallace had a
simple financial strategy: 1-800-CALL-RITCHIE.
Cedric Ritchie says Wallace and Harrison inspired confidence from the first.
“They were likeable, ambitious, very energetic. They knew where they wanted to go,
and they knew how to get there. There wasn’t much grass growing under their feet.”
As a native of the Saint John River Valley, Ritchie is particularly impressed with
the economic benefits the success of McCain has brought to the area. “Potatoes are
a seasonal industry. The crop all comes off in six weeks in September and October.
Before McCain started, most of the crop was shipped to Montreal and Toronto. The
glut would reduce the price. McCain brought stability to the marketing and to the
price. More importantly, it brought the value-added processing to the area, and that
created steady employment. Before, it was all seasonal employment.”
The farmers obtained price stability by signing pre-season contracts to sell all or
some of their crop to McCain at a set price. The growers still had crop risk, but McCain
Foods took on the market risk. As it turned out, during most of the 1960s and 1970s,
the contract price was higher than the market price at the time of delivery.
From the beginning, transporting was a major problem for McCain. Florenceville
is far from the company’s major Canadian markets and as production levels soared
during the early years, getting the goods to the customers on time became increasingly
difficult.
Elbert Day and Walter Ross founded Day & Ross in 1950. They had one truck
for hauling potatoes from New Brunswick to Quebec. Joe Palmer, a colourful New
Brunswick grower turned entrepreneur, later bought a share of the company. Once
the Florenceville factory was opened, it didn’t take long for McCain Foods to become
Day & Ross’s biggest customer. In 1965, it bought majority ownership of the company;
Palmer retained a small interest and stayed on as president.
As McCain grew, so did Day & Ross, and by the end of the 1960s it owned four
hundred trucks. The company had good returns for many years but then got into
financial difficulty. New management was later able to overcome those problems and
reshape Day & Ross into one of Canada’s most successful trucking lines and a significant
contributor to the overall success of McCain Foods.
As the 1960s began, McCain Foods’ sales were growing ever larger each year.
Florenceville was becoming more prosperous. The shops were bustling and people
were driving newer cars. One payday, just to demonstrate the importance of
McCain to the local economy, the company paid everyone in two-dollar bills,
which soon overflowed the tills of the local storekeepers.
Harrison and Wallace weren’t paying themselves lavish salaries or dividends.
32 From the Ground up
t he BeG inninG 33
Gail Seeley hands documents
to the driver of a Day & Ross
double trailer “B-train,” c.1970.