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Irving vs. Irving

Canada's Feuding Billionaires and the Stories They Won't Tell

Author Jacques Poitras
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Paperback
$18.00 US
Penguin Canada
On sale Sep 01, 2015 | 384 Pages | 9780143189954
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The inside story of how these ambitious, often ruthless entrepreneurs came to dominate the economic and political affairs of Atlantic Canada, and how they learned to love the property that perplexed them most: their media monopoly
     They are Canada's third wealthiest family and one of the largest private landowners in the U.S.A. ... And yet they operate almost entirely in secret.
     They are the Irvings. And they have always placed a premium on discretion and family unity. They built their empire--which includes Canada's largest refinery, soon to be linked by pipeline to Alberta's oil fields--by remaining private. The Irvings also control all of New Brunswick's English daily newspapers, which often allowed the family's business pursuits to escape journalistic scrutiny. In Irving vs. Irving, veteran journalist Jacques Poitras tells the story of how these ambitious, often ruthless entrepreneurs came to dominate the economic and political affairs of Atlantic Canada, and how they learned to love the property that perplexed them most: their media monopoly.
The newspapers would eventually falter in telling that story of family upheaval and business transformation, because they were inextricably part of it. Next to the other Irving operations − pulp mills, the oil refinery, logging operations, trucking, shipbuilding – the papers were tiny. But K.C.’s death, Neil Reynolds’s arrival as editor, and the popularization of the internet would transform them, to the point that they would prove contentious themselves when the empire began to fracture. As rivalries and resentment grew among the next generation of Irvings, one of their own – a great-grandchild of K.C. – would take direct control of the news business for the first time. This in turn would revive the debate about editorial control, even as a rift in the family grew wider.
 
By 2013 it was clear that K.C. had failed, with is will, to impose unity and harmony on his family – that he had failed, as the 1993 headline had put it, to make them “behave themselves.”
Copyright © 2014 by Jacques Poitras. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
© Kevin Barrett
JACQUES POITRAS has been the provincial affairs reporter for CBC News in New Brunswick since 2000. He is the author of four previous books: The Right Fight: Bernard Lord and the Conservative Dilemma; Beaverbrook: A Shattered Legacy, which was a finalist for the BC National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction; Imaginary Line: Life on an Unfinished Border, which was a finalist for the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing; and Irving vs. Irving, which was shortlisted for the National Business Book Award and won the Atlantic Independent Booksellers' Choice Award for 2015. 
Online: http://twitter.com/poitrasbook View titles by Jacques Poitras

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The inside story of how these ambitious, often ruthless entrepreneurs came to dominate the economic and political affairs of Atlantic Canada, and how they learned to love the property that perplexed them most: their media monopoly
     They are Canada's third wealthiest family and one of the largest private landowners in the U.S.A. ... And yet they operate almost entirely in secret.
     They are the Irvings. And they have always placed a premium on discretion and family unity. They built their empire--which includes Canada's largest refinery, soon to be linked by pipeline to Alberta's oil fields--by remaining private. The Irvings also control all of New Brunswick's English daily newspapers, which often allowed the family's business pursuits to escape journalistic scrutiny. In Irving vs. Irving, veteran journalist Jacques Poitras tells the story of how these ambitious, often ruthless entrepreneurs came to dominate the economic and political affairs of Atlantic Canada, and how they learned to love the property that perplexed them most: their media monopoly.

Excerpt

The newspapers would eventually falter in telling that story of family upheaval and business transformation, because they were inextricably part of it. Next to the other Irving operations − pulp mills, the oil refinery, logging operations, trucking, shipbuilding – the papers were tiny. But K.C.’s death, Neil Reynolds’s arrival as editor, and the popularization of the internet would transform them, to the point that they would prove contentious themselves when the empire began to fracture. As rivalries and resentment grew among the next generation of Irvings, one of their own – a great-grandchild of K.C. – would take direct control of the news business for the first time. This in turn would revive the debate about editorial control, even as a rift in the family grew wider.
 
By 2013 it was clear that K.C. had failed, with is will, to impose unity and harmony on his family – that he had failed, as the 1993 headline had put it, to make them “behave themselves.”
Copyright © 2014 by Jacques Poitras. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

Author

© Kevin Barrett
JACQUES POITRAS has been the provincial affairs reporter for CBC News in New Brunswick since 2000. He is the author of four previous books: The Right Fight: Bernard Lord and the Conservative Dilemma; Beaverbrook: A Shattered Legacy, which was a finalist for the BC National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction; Imaginary Line: Life on an Unfinished Border, which was a finalist for the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing; and Irving vs. Irving, which was shortlisted for the National Business Book Award and won the Atlantic Independent Booksellers' Choice Award for 2015. 
Online: http://twitter.com/poitrasbook View titles by Jacques Poitras

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