The family made their fortune in oil, and moved to timber, transport, building and retail. They control New Brunswick and are moving across the US Northeast.
A single family, the Irvings, with a fortune founded in oil, control the eastern Canadian province of New Brunswick. Over more than a century, they have established vertical and horizontal monopolies that allow them to do without suppliers and business partners. They are the opposite of a multinational, as they don’t extend their operations across the globe, but exploit everything in a limited area.....MUCH MORE
The Saint John oil refinery, Canada’s largest, supplies the family’s distribution network, which covers northeastern North America from Newfoundland to New England. It provides fuel for their huge fleet of lorries, which carry produce from their farms, newspapers from their printing works, and parcels handled by their delivery service; anything that doesn’t go by road travels on the Irvings’ rail network and fleet of ships.
The Irvings own vast tracts of forest, harvesting timber that is processed in their many sawmills and paper mills. Their construction company Kent Homes has easy access to building materials — wood, and steel and concrete, which the Irvings also produce. The list of group businesses seems endless: a naval dockyard, packaging factories, intercity buses, car dealerships, restaurants, an ice hockey team, DIY stores, pharmacies...
They also dominate the political scene. Their philanthropic pretensions fail to mask their interference in public affairs, both at federal level and in New Brunswick and the other Atlantic provinces, where they act like a second government. Few sports complexes, museums or university research centres (energy, forestry, sustainable development) are not Irving-sponsored.
Conflicts of interest
The family control all English-language newspapers in New Brunswick. Only the French-language daily L’Acadie Nouvelle is not a part of their empire, although they print it. They have acquired many local radio and television stations, and the University of New Brunswick presses. The conflicts of interest are grotesque: group-owned media reflect the positions of the Irving family in every area of social and industrial life. When it was reported in autumn 2018 that an explosion at the Saint John refinery had killed four people, a doctor doubted the accuracy of the company’s statement and the impartiality of the media coverage (1)....
