The Irving Family Provides Many Jobs to a Canadian Province, But Also Draws Concerns

Even in a frequently fogbound port city along the Atlantic Ocean, the billowing clouds of steam rising from Canada’s largest oil refinery over Saint John, New Brunswick, are impossible to miss.

On a ridge overlooking the refinery sit six enormous tanks, each containing one million barrels of crude oil. Letters painted in dark blue spell “Irving,” the family whose businesses dominate not only Saint John, but most of New Brunswick.

The larger of the Irvings’ two local paper mills looms above the Saint John River like a medieval fortress. Irving-owned railway tracks crisscross the city, linking smaller factories owned by the family to ports under Irving control. Irving-owned building-supply stores and gas stations dot the streets in this city of 78,000 people, where park signs honor Irving contributions to their upkeep.

The Irving Family Provides Many Jobs to a Canadian Province, But Also Draws Concerns  at george magazine
Tanks spelling out the Irving name at the oil refinery. The family’s businesses dominate the city of Saint John in the Canadian province of New Brunswick.
A boy looking through a window of a subsidized housing unit in Saint John.
Children playing in an inflatable pool with a parent in Crescent Valley, a neighborhood of subsidized housing in Saint John.

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By The New York Times

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