By John Chilibeck, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter The Daily Gleaner
Suzanne Heather Cameron Irving (nee Farrer), the wife of the late business tycoon Jack Irving, died on Monday in Saint John following a brief illness.
Her son, John Irving, the president of Ocean Capital, told Brunswick News on Thursday that only two weeks before her death, his 91-year-old mother got “bad news from something that was totally unexpected. So, it was very sudden and very fast.”
He said the family preferred to keep her cause of death private but wanted to commemorate her life.
ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW
She was proud of being a lifelong Saint Johner, he said.
“She was born on Germain Street and she loved this place very much and spent much of her life here. She did go off to Halifax in the early 1950s to attend Dalhousie, so she had a bit of an adventurous spirit as well,” he said, pointing out that she went from being a teacher to a registered X-ray technician in her young adulthood.
“That was here in Saint John. She enjoyed the challenge of it because radiography wasn’t brand new at that point, but it was high tech for that time. She was always very proud that she had achieved that.”
Although some details were missing from her obituary, a marriage certificate in the provincial archives shows that Suzanne Irving was 25 years old on Jan. 4, 1960, when she married Jack Irving at Trinity Anglican Church in Saint John.
The daughter of Dr. Isaac Keillor Farrer, who had a dental practice on Germain Street, and Marjorie Cameron Matheson, she was a teacher when she married 27-year-old Jack, the youngest of the three brothers whose father, K.C. Irving, transformed a woodland and oil business into a hugely successful, vertically integrated group of companies under the Irving banner in the 20th century.
Her husband predeceased her at the age of 78 in 2010. Jack led the Irving group’s construction, engineering, and concrete and steel fabrication companies as well as Commercial Properties, Source Atlantic and Acadia Broadcasting.
His older brothers, Arthur Irving and J.K. Irving, died more recently. Arthur, who headed the oil division, passed away in May of last year at 93, and J.K., who presided over woodland operations and once owned Brunswick News, died a little over a month later at the age of 96.
ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW
At one time, the trio were considered among Canada’s wealthiest, with a net worth in 2007 of $5.8 billion (worth $8.6 billion today). Jack was tagged as the philosopher among the brothers, quieter, more reflective and less aggressive. He also survived a harrowing kidnapping attempt in 1982, freeing himself from inside the trunk of a car that he had been forced into.
The family valued their privacy and rarely did media interviews.
John Irving said losing a parent is always tough but added that “when you lose your last parent, in a way, you lose your connection to your first parent. So, she’ll be missed by a lot of people, including my sister Anne and I.”
Suzanne Irving’s obituary noted that she served three terms on the board of governors at the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton. She also was on the board of the New Brunswick Museum, as well as president of the ladies section of the Union Club in Saint John.
She had a lifelong passion for education and self-improvement.
“She was always interested in how she could make this place better,” John Irving said. “She would sometimes tell us the story about going to the symphony with her parents and would stress the importance of the New Brunswick Museum. It holds the treasures of the people of New Brunswick. And for her, those treasures, for generations of thousands of years, because it includes First Nations, being appropriately and respectfully treated was paramount.”
The socialite was a recipient of the Rotary Club’s Paul Harris Fellow Award and an honorary lifetime membership from the Union Club, which she belonged to for 73 years.
The obituary mentioned her love of her summers spent in Westfield on the St. John River, where her father built a house in the 1930s and used to take a commuter train back and forth, and her “enduring passion for salmon fishing on the Restigouche and Upsalquitch Rivers standing in canoes, wearing boots, casting her long line all the way out.”
ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW
John Irving said he remembers a childhood spent at the summer house.
“School would end, we’d pile in the car and go. Labour Day would come, and back we’d go to Saint John. She had a good circle of friends there, and there was always something to do. It was a pretty good spot,” he said, emotion in his voice.
Besides John, she is survived by her daughter Anne Cameron Irving Oxley, and six grandchildren.
Her other son, Colin D. Irving, predeceased her in 2019.
ONTARIO NOW NEWSLETTER Get our free new weekly newsletter
Error! Sorry, there was an error processing your request.
There was a problem with the recaptcha. Please try again.
Please enter a valid email address. Sign Up This newsletter is only available for subscribers. If you are already a subscriber, please login now. If you want to become subscriber, please click here Yes, I’d also like to receive customized content suggestions and promotional messages from thepeterboroughexaminer.com.
You may unsubscribe at any time. By signing up, you agree to our terms of use and privacy policy. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google privacy policy and terms of service apply.
ONTARIO NOW NEWSLETTER You’re signed up! You’ll start getting Ontario Now in your inbox soon.
Want more of the latest from us? Sign up for more at our newsletter page.
Read more on thepeterboroughexaminer.com
