Biography & Autobiography Business
Irving vs. Irving
Canada's Feuding Billionaires and the Stories They Won't Tell
- Publisher
- Penguin Group Canada
- Initial publish date
- Sep 2015
- Category
- Business, Political, Rich & Famous
-
Paperback / softback
- ISBN
- 9780143189954
- Publish Date
- Sep 2015
- List Price
- $22.00
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Description
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.
About the author
A seasoned political reporter for CBC Radio, Jacques Poitras has received the top national feature reporting award from the Radio and Television News Directors Association of Canada two years in a row. His work has also been honoured by the National Newspaper Awards and Amnesty International. He has appeared on National Public Radio in the United States as well as the BBC. With his credentials, insight, and knowledge of New Brunswick politics, there is no better person to have written The Right Fight, a truly Canadian story.
Excerpt: Irving vs. Irving: Canada's Feuding Billionaires and the Stories They Won't Tell (by (author) Jacques Poitras)
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.”
Editorial Reviews
"Deftly recounts the tale of Canada's third-richest family." --The Chronicle-Herald
"Since the Irvings ... own most of the province's newspapers, there were always questions about how the family's business was being covered by the press. In Irving vs. Irving ... Poitras attempts to set the record straight." --Maclean's
"A thorough ... often amusing look at a province where economy is massively reliant on a single family and where the family, its billions aside, persists in seeing itself as a humble lot trying to earn 'enough for a hamburger now and again.'" --Toronto Star
