Wallace McCain co-founder of McCain’s Foods and bitter battle for control of the family business

On my walk through the glen at Mount Pleasant Cemetery in Toronto, many hundred miles from Florenceville, New Brunswick, I came upon the grave of Canada’s “Potato King” and French fry pioneer, Wallace McCain, co-founder, with his brother Harrison, of McCain Foods.

The brothers founded New Brunswick-based McCain Foods Ltd. in 1956, selling over $152,000 worth of French fries in their first year alone. From that modest start, they built the company into one of the largest producers of frozen French fries in the world.

In doing so, Wallace and Harrison were following in the footsteps of their father, A.D. McCain, who ran a seed potato exporting business in the family’s hometown of Florenceville. Born into a family of potato farmers, the brothers drew on that inherited knowledge and trade to found McCain Foods.

The partnership that built an empire would not end in harmony. In the early 1990s, a bitter dispute over company succession split the brothers for good. Wallace was forced out of McCain Foods in 1994 and left New Brunswick for good, heading to Toronto with little contact with his brother until a reconciliation a year before Harrison’s death in 2004.

Wallace went on to build a second empire, transforming Maple Leaf Foods into one of Canada’s leading food companies. He served as its chairman until his own death in 2011.

George Wallace Ferguson McCain died at home in Toronto on May 13, 2011. He was 81.

1930–2011

The brothers founded New Brunswick-based McCain Foods Ltd. in 1956.

See my related visit to another family food dynasty, The Weston’s. 

Three Generations of the Weston family dynasty buried at Mt. Pleasant Cemetery