From the Ground Up - McCain Foods Limited

LEFT: Harrison and Wallace
at the site of the Florenceville
factory, 1956.
RIGHT: Opening ceremony,
February 23, 1957. Wallace
McCain (far left) watches on
as New Brunswick premier
Hugh John Flemming (far
right) and Milton Gregg,
federal minister of labour,
cut the ribbon.
because the frozen food industry was still young, and its machinery and methodology
were far from fully developed.
While the factory was being built, Wallace and Harrison moved their young
families from Saint John, a big city by New Brunswick standards, to the village of
Florenceville, home to just a few hundred people. Wallace’s wife, Margaret (or Margie,
as she is known), recalls the house she and her family moved into as small, cold,
mouse-infested, and having a leaky roof. It was only later, once the company was successful,
that the couple obtained a mortgage from the bank to build a better house,
on a site overlooking the Saint John River. Wallace and Margaret hired an architect
to design a $40,000 house, but Wallace couldn’t raise more than $30,000 from the
bank. He solved the problem by having the contractor “cut off ” a third of the rooms,
at the back of the house.
Harrison and Marion (Billie) McCain built a house next door to Wallace and
Margie. Both houses were enlarged in later years, though the original fronts remain
in place.
The official opening of the McCain Foods factory was a major event, not just for
Carleton County but for all of New Brunswick. Premier Hugh John Flemming cut the
ribbon for the factory and Milton Gregg, the federal minister of labour, came from
Ottawa to do the same for the cold storage unit. They were among the seven hundred
people who crowded into the Florenceville high school for the opening ceremonies
and speeches.
Few of them understood how big a challenge the McCain brothers had set for
themselves. Florenceville and its surroundings were farm country – not home to
the skilled trades people needed to keep a large manufacturing operation going.
Wallace McCain recalls going to garages looking for mechanics who would be able
to maintain the equipment in the new factory. “No one knew anything about the
technical part of the business,” he says. “There were no machines like that around
Florenceville.”
Fortunately, Frank Hickling, who had assisted Olof Pierson in designing the plant
and had been maintenance manager of the Birds Eye plant in Maine, stayed on as
mechanic and plant manager. He had never finished high school, but he was smart
and he knew how to run a frozen food factory. Nobody else did. “If we hadn’t had
him, I don’t know what we would have done,” says Wallace. “Nobody else had any
experience.”
There was rarely a dull moment. The fryers sometimes overheated, causing the accumulated
potato crumbs or oil filter paper to burst into flames. Wallace says he used
to make sure he had his clothes within easy reach when he went to bed in case he was
called out to one of these fires in the middle of the night. (Now all McCain plants use
heat exchangers with high-pressure steam systems to heat the fryers. They also have
flame extinguishing systems in the hood above the fryers, thereby eliminating the
risk of fires.)
One of Pierson’s innovations was a machine that used steam to peel the skin off the
potatoes. It was shaped like an oil drum and had a door on the side through which
the potatoes were loaded. The only problem was that sometimes the pressure of the
steam would blow the door off.
10 From the Ground up
t he BeG inninG 11
LEFT: The trim table, 1957.
This was “positive trimming,”
in which each potato was
individually trimmed.
RIGHT: Opening-day tour:
Wallace explains the packing
area to Minister Gregg
(centre), while Harrison chats
with Premier Flemming.