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Back to K.C. Irving: Competing with Giants, with Shane Parrish.

Why Did K.C. Irving Start Planting Spruce at 58?

Shane Parrish says K.C. Irving started planting spruce trees in 1957, at 58, because his pulp and lumber operations were consuming trees faster than the trees grew back. Somebody had to grow new ones, so he went to a stripped ridge in northern New Brunswick.

Government foresters thought he was wasting his time because the trees would not grow there. Rival companies agreed, and some of his own employees thought he was living in a dream world. An American paper company chairman questioned the point and doubted K.C. Irving, already 58, would live to see a harvest. Forestry professor Barry Flinger was sure the trees would not grow there and bet he would eat his textbooks if they did. K.C. Irving accepted the wager. The first 3,000 seedlings went into the ground at Black Brook.

People asked why he was doing it. It had to be done if they wanted any trees for themselves at all. His one regret was that he had not started 20 years earlier.

Grokipedia·Shane Parrish·New Brunswick

Transcript

K.C. Irving: Competing with Giants ·

The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish

More from this episode

  1. How Did K.C. Irving Handle a Missing Oil Delivery?Shane Parrish says K.C. Irving handled a missing oil delivery by answering the call himself and phoning back until the oil was in the house.
  2. How Did K.C. Irving Get Gasoline When Imperial Oil Cut Him Off?Shane Parrish says K.C. Irving went looking for his own gasoline after Imperial Oil cut him off and expected him to stick to selling cars.
  3. Why Did K.C. Irving Refuse a Loan His Father Would Guarantee?Shane Parrish says K.C. Irving refused a line of credit unless it stood in his own name, even though his father would have guaranteed the loan.
  4. Why Did K.C. Irving Start Irving Oil?Shane Parrish says K.C.
  5. Why Did K.C. Irving Keep Expanding During the Great Depression?Shane Parrish says K.C. Irving kept expanding through the Great Depression because fewer people were trying to grow and there was less competition.
  6. Why Did K.C. Irving Buy a Ship When the Railway Raised His Rates?Shane Parrish says K.C. Irving bought his own tanker after Canadian National Railway raised the rates on his oil and refused to treat him like Imperial Oil.
  7. Why Did K.C. Irving Keep Cutting Timber He Could Not Sell?Shane Parrish says K.C. Irving kept cutting timber through the Depression and stopped selling it, while competitors laid people off and waited.
  8. How Did K.C. Irving's Veneer Plant Help Build the Mosquito Bomber?Shane Parrish says the first part of K.C. Irving's business transformed by the war was Canada Veneers, a small veneer company he had purchased the year before.
  9. Why Did K.C. Irving Count the Trees Before Buying a Forest?Shane Parrish says K.C. Irving counted the trees himself because he would not buy a defunct railway's forest until his own count matched the inspectors.
  10. How Much Was K.C. Irving Worth in 1948?Shane Parrish says Canadian Business put K.C. Irving on its cover in February 1948 and guessed his fortune at about $100 million. By 1948, K.C.
  11. What Did Harrison McCain Learn From K.C. Irving?Shane Parrish says Harrison McCain reduced what he learned from K.C. Irving to one sentence: don't ever be satisfied.
  12. Why Did K.C. Irving Turn Down British Petroleum's Refinery Deal?Shane Parrish says K.C. Irving walked away from British Petroleum because it wanted the right to buy Irving Oil when he retired or died.
  13. Why Did New Brunswick Want More Than One K.C. Irving?Shane Parrish says people called K.C.
  14. Did K.C. Irving Take Dividends From His Newspapers?Shane Parrish says K.C.
  15. Why Did K.C. Irving Say It Was Too Expensive to Die in Canada?Shane Parrish says K.C.
  16. Why Was K.C. Irving's Newspaper Ownership Not a Crime?Shane Parrish says a monopoly was not automatically a crime. The Supreme Court of Canada ruled the government had to prove that K.C.
  17. How Many Trees Did K.C. Irving Plant?Shane Parrish says K.C. Irving's spruce program passed one billion trees on land experts said would not grow them. In 1957, 58-year-old K.C.

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