SAINT JOHN, N.B. – There is a striking photograph of Jack Irving from Labour Day, 1971 – the weekend when a team of sportsmen from New Brunswick won an interprovincial tuna fishing tournament off Cape St. Mary, N.S.
He’s kneeling beside an 825-pound bluefin – the largest fish landed during the three-day competition, and a specimen that could have figured in a story by Ernest Hemingway. Remarkably, though, it is not the fish that catches one’s attention. It’s the face of the fisherman: intelligent and confident, yet humble about the extent of his own accomplishment and unwearied by the great exertion – an example of quiet, inspiring strength.
Those three qualities – quiet, inspiring and strong – have been used often to describe John Ernest Irving, known to the world as Jack. He was born in 1932, the youngest of New Brunswick entrepreneur K.C. Irving’s three sons. In manner, he was both open and modest, a man who clearly loved people and who did not hold himself above anyone. From high school on, he earned a reputation as a smart organizer, and throughout life, he persuaded others not by force of argument, but through his strength of character, vision and integrity. It is no coincidence that the most common word used to describe him is "gentleman."
As a manager of the family-owned businesses, he focused on construction and property development, advocating innovative processes and practices whenever it made sense to do so. Under his leadership, Ocean Steel and Strescon Limited grew to be the top suppliers of steel and concrete in Atlantic Canada. He was also an early exponent of employing environmentally friendly technology. Through intelligent direction and tremendous hard work, he was able to build modest New Brunswick businesses into much larger enterprises. In the process, he played a role in changing the streetscape and industrial landscape of Atlantic Canada.
As he watched new buildings grow through planning and collective effort, he also became a community builder, passionate about the growth of Saint John and New Brunswick. He understood the link between infrastructure and the business environment in a given place and people’s ability to live there: that to grow, communities need opportunity. While he never sought publicity or a role in politics, he was passionate about public policy, seeing it as the means by which communities make decisions that either improve quality of life or reduce it.
Quality of life was something he cared deeply about as a father and a citizen, and his efforts to improve his own community made a great impression on Saint John.
He encouraged businesses to stay in the city and in New Brunswick, believing that the people of this province are capable of achieving great things. Through his own actions, he demonstrated that this is so.
Among old friends, he discussed the value of amalgamation, seeing the separate municipalities of greater Saint John as parts of a larger community whose residents could achieve far more by working together.
He supported twinning Route 1 to the United States to connect businesses in New Brunswick to continental trade, creating new opportunities to live and work here. And as a property developer, he played an important role in the movement to redevelop heritage buildings in Saint John’s historic centre. Through his support for landmark projects, such as the development of Centerbeam Place undertaken by his son, John F. Irving, he demonstrated that the beauty of a community’s architectural past can be part of its present and future, when development is approached with care and attention to detail.
Recognizing that a community is more than bricks and mortar, he also supported community institutions such as Symphony New Brunswick and the Imperial Theatre, investing his personal capital in enterprises which produce no monetary reward, but pay a priceless dividend back to the community.
For his business acumen, he was inducted into the Canadian Business Hall of Fame; for his good citizenship, he was named to the Order of Canada. Though he is gone today, his legacy lives on – in locally based businesses, which still compete successfully with the best in the world; in the historic facades of Saint John’s King and Prince William streets, and in its restored Imperial Theatre; in the love of his wife, Suzanne; and in his children, John, Colin and Anne.
No man can leave a greater legacy than to make his family and community richer in substance and in spirit.
Quietly, confidently and inspirationally, that’s what Jack Irving did.
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