Have the media whitewashed the lives of J.K. and Arthur Irving? [video]

A short documentary titled “The Family That Owns New Brunswick” has been watched more than 140,000 times on YouTube since its publication about eight months ago. 

The popularity of the mini-doc, which reviews the massive power of the Irvings, might reflect a hunger for critical perspectives about the homegrown dynasty and the billionaire class more generally. 

Watch “The Family That Owns New Brunswick”

But following the deaths of J.K. and Arthur Irving, a number of obituaries and news stories in the mainstream media have omitted or downplayed longstanding critiques of their vast industrial holdings and controversial business practices. 

The 15-minute video makes the case that the Irving companies enjoy practically unlimited political power in New Brunswick, contributing to social problems including poverty and pollution. 

“In New Brunswick, the get what they want, when they want, no matter who is in office,” the voice-over reads. 

The video was produced by Ryan Forneri, co-founder of the company Spoke Media. In an interview, Forneri said the Ontario-based startup is interested in telling stories that are “often overlooked in Canada.” 

A few months after he published the video, news broke that Arthur Irving had died, followed soon by his brother J.K. Irving. At the time, Forneri noticed that more people were watching his video, especially in New Brunswick. 

“The largest viewership is from New Brunswick at 28 per cent, with 24 per cent from Ontario and 16 per cent from Nova Scotia,” he told the NB Media Co-op.  

“I think there is a renewed interest in what is going to happen with the Irving family and their companies,” he said. 

Watch the full interview with Ryan Forneri, Spoke Media 

James K. Irving, 96, owner of the J.D. Irving Group, died in Saint John on June 21. JDI is a sprawling conglomerate that includes forestry, wood and paper products, food, transport, construction, and shipbuilding.

His death came just weeks after his brother Arthur Irving, 93, owner of Irving Oil, died in Boston on May 13. 

Irving Oil owns Canada’s largest oil refinery — the biggest source of carbon emissions in New Brunswick — and operates some 900 gas stations, a network of distribution terminals, and the only oil refinery in the Republic of Ireland. 

The obituaries and commentaries published by New Brunswick’s English-language newspapers were especially favorable, omitting any mention whatsoever of the controversies that marked their careers, such as their massive political donations or pollution from their industrial operations.

Until 2022, those newspapers were owned by JDI — with Jamie Irving, a grandson of J.K. Irving, serving as publisher. The near-monopoly, formerly known as Brunswick News Inc., is now owned by Postmedia, a larger mass media conglomerate. 

An editorial about James K. Irving following his death, published in all of three of the company’s New Brunswick dailies — the Telegraph-Journal, Daily Gleaner, and Times & Transcript — stated that the family’s involvement in the newspaper chain was “overwhelmingly positive.” 

But that statement overlooks the fact that in 1970, the Senate Special Committee on the Mass Media called Irving’s control of the newspaper chain “about as flagrant an example of abusing the public interest as you’re likely to find in Canada.” 

And in 1981, the Royal Commission on Newspapers called for reforms that would result in the break-up of regional monopolies, including the Irving newspapers; the legislation never materialized. 

The editorial also praised James K. Irving for “successes in reducing intergenerational poverty,” especially in Saint John, where he founded an organization called Partners Assisting Local Schools.

However, child poverty rates in the Irving-dominated city are persistently high, reaching 27.3 per cent in 2021, compared to a provincial average of 18.7 per cent and a Canadian average of 15.6 per cent. 

News articles in the formerly Irving-owned papers also featured accolades from political grandees such as Frank McKenna. 

The former premier, now deputy chair at TD Securities, was quoted as saying: “We now have to be optimistic that their legacy will live on through their families and their great industries and continue on for the benefit of New Brunswick.” 

Investigative reporter Bruce Livesey provides a different take in his 2017 series of articles titled the House of Irving, published by Canada’s National Observer. In an interview, he argued that the Irving businesses have worsened poverty and other social ills in New Brunswick, in part by using their monopoly or oligopoly position to drive down wages. 

“When you don’t have competition, you can really dictate wages without much concern,” Livesey told the NB Media Co-op. 

He pointed to massive government subsidies for the Irving companies and their practice of using offshore tax shelters, saying those factors have contributed to conditions of austerity in New Brunswick. 

“Both the municipal and provincial government in New Brunswick didn’t have a lot of money to help the poor, to have reasonable rates of, say, welfare payments,” he said.  

As for their newspapers, he noted that as a young reporter in the 1980s, he spent two summers working for the Daily Gleaner, where he saw firsthand how their editorial processes functioned. 

“I was doing a story about the regulation of pesticides in New Brunswick,” including Agent Orange, which hadn’t yet been banned by the feds, he recalled.

“When [the editors] realized what I was up to, they killed that story.”  

And while the Telegraph-Journal described Arthur Irving as “an energetic man who shook hands with everyone he met,” Livesey said the oil entrepreneur was “known as a bully, and thin-skinned and vindictive.” 

For example, following Arthur Irving’s 1980 divorce, “he ordered his children not to have anything to do with their mother,” Livesey said.

Watch the full interview with Bruce Livesey:

Considering the history of the Irving press, it’s unsurprising to see such favourable treatment of the Irving patriarchs. But even the independent French-language newspaper Acadie Nouvelle published unsigned obituaries that dodged any hint of criticism of the billionaire brothers.

To its credit, the newspaper also published a critical commentary on the death of Arthur Irving by Université de Moncton professor Alain Deneault, later translated into English for the NB Media Co-op. 

And on the national stage, a CBC obituary for J.K. Irving managed to avoid any reference to controversy, but included laudatory statements from Premier Blaine Higgs and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in honour of both men.  

Meanwhile, a Globe and Mail obituary for J.K. Irving described him as a “gentlemanly billionaire,” with passing references to the critics, buried deep in the article. 

“While his companies generated significant jobs for New Brunswick, he also attracted some controversy,” the article notes, “whether it was crushing union drives, threatening to move business out of the province or putting much of his wealth in offshore trust accounts in Bermuda.” 

Coverage of the Irvings following the deaths has been “very sanitized,” said Erin Steuter, a professor of sociology at Mount Allison University specializing in critical media studies.  

“I think it does a disservice to the readers to have a moment of overview on their legacy and to leave out some very important issues that affect New Brunswickers,” she said.  

She noted a bitter 27-month strike at the Saint John oil refinery in the 1990s that ended with the firing of the union president and 36 other workers. 

Returning workers were subjected to “a process of ideological re-education which was essentially a means for the company to control the hearts and minds of its now broken labour force,” Steuter wrote in a 2004 journal article. 

“Not surprisingly, the words ‘brainwashing’ and ‘blacklisting’ of strikers never appeared in the Irving paper’s coverage of the strike,” she wrote. “Instead, the New Brunswick papers published the names of the 37 striking workers who were fired by the company under the headline ‘Not welcome at the refinery.’”

Following the recent deaths in the family, complimentary obituaries might reflect an aversion to “speaking ill of the dead,” she said, but she pushed back on this tendency.  

Critics are “chided and told, ‘This is not the time,’” she said. “But then they don’t make another time for it.” 

The recent deaths mean that a generational transition is underway. Previously, Irving Oil had already announced a “strategic review” that it said may result in a full or partial sale of the company. Now, a process of inheritance is presumably taking place, with billions of dollars of wealth at stake. 

Steuter said now is the time for journalists to look into tax havens and ask tough questions about how the wealth will be dispersed. “At the time of their death, it definitely seems like a very good chance to say ‘Where’s the money? Who’s it going to go to?’” 

The mainstream coverage hasn’t entirely whitewashed the careers of the deceased billionaires. 

For example, a Radio-Canada obituary noted that Irving Oil and other family companies took advantage of tax havens while obtaining hundreds of millions of dollars in government subsidies, citing an investigative report published in 2022. 

The CBC’s obituary of Arthur Irving also elaborated on certain controversial episodes from the life of the oil baron. For example, it noted a bitter falling out with his son Kenneth Irving, and the two-year strike at the Saint John oil refinery. 

That piece was written by journalist Jacques Poitras, who also authored the 2014 book Irving Vs. Irving: Canada’s Feuding Billionaires and the Stories They Won’t Tell. Poitras declined an interview for this story, but said he stands by his book. 

The best-seller, published by Penguin in 2014, describes how editorial independence at the BNI newspapers ebbed and flowed over the years, and how those newspapers covered – or more often, failed to cover – divisions within the family and controversies related to their businesses. 

For example, the book outlines a campaign by J.K. Irving’s son Jim calling on the province to lower industrial electricity rates below cost, a demand that was reflected in the family’s newspapers.  

“From the cautious approach to Irving stories dating back to the forties, to the generous reporting on Jim’s lobbying for lower power rates, readers have always had to wonder if there was more to the story,” Poitras wrote.  

In official communications, the Irving companies typically emphasize their charitable donations, multimillion-dollar investments, and other good news stories. Sometimes they go on the offensive against critical reports. 

In one case, JDI’s vice-president of communications, Mary Keith, demanded that the CBC retract a story by Poitras about the 2015 firing of New Brunswick’s then-chief medical officer of health, Dr. Eilish Cleary. 

When Cleary was placed on leave prior to her firing, she was studying the health effects of the herbicide glyphosate, deemed a probable carcinogen by the World Health Organization earlier that year. 

At the time, Poitras noted in his article that glyphosate is used by JDI in its forestry operations, and by NB Power. This brief mention was met with a severe backlash from JDI.  

The company said the CBC had “presented an unsubstantiated conspiracy theory as fact,” by insinuating a connection between Cleary’s leave of absence, her study of glyphosate, and the two companies mentioned in the report.  

JDI demanded that the CBC not only remove the story, but also “publish a full retraction, and apologize for their appalling behavior.” CBC refused, and the story remains online today. 

The company went on to lodge two consecutive complaints with the CBC demanding that it ban Poitras from covering the family and their businesses. But the broadcaster rejected those complaints, with the ombudsman saying it would “amount to a form of censorship.”  

JDI ultimately failed in its bid to muzzle a prominent CBC journalist. But if coverage in recent months is any indication, very few reporters or media outlets want to rock the boat when it comes to the Irving family, suggesting a pervasive chill in the media industry that has outlived J.K. and Arthur Irving.

David Gordon Koch is a journalist with the NB Media Co-op who formerly worked as a reporter for the Moncton Times & Transcript when it was owned by J.D. Irving Inc. This reporting has been made possible in part by the Government of Canada, administered by the Canadian Association of Community Television Stations and Users (CACTUS).