TORONTO - Family, friends, politicians and Canadian business heavyweights remembered food mogul Wallace McCain as an entrepreneur who lived life passionately, loved his family and gave millions to help the community.
Mourners crammed a downtown Toronto church Friday to pay their respects to McCain, who died last week at 81 after a long battle with pancreatic cancer.
The businessman, who co-founded McCain Foods and later took control of Maple Leaf Foods (TSX:MFI), was among the country's wealthiest people.
His children, grandchildren and widow huddled together to give each other hugs and kisses before making their way inside. One of McCain's granddaughters sobbed as she and the others accompanied his sheet-draped coffin toward an altar covered in white roses and peonies.
The high-profile mourners at the ceremony included finance minister Jim Flaherty, former Prime Minister Paul Martin, and Bob Rae and Mike Harris, both former premiers of Ontario.
But it was former New Brunswick premier Frank McKenna, a longtime friend of McCain, who gave the eulogy that had the 2,500 people packed inside the standing room-only church in both laughter and tears.
He fondly remembered McCain's passion and love of life.
But McKenna also described McCain as steely-eyed capitalist, and patriotic friend who was always good for a laugh and would swear like "a drunken sailor."
He told one story about vacationing in Italy, where McCain went off on a jet ski and ended up too close to the home of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.
"He came flying across the water with the Italian police in hot pursuit and this 79-year-old business icon was smiling from ear to ear."
But McKenna also praised McCain's leadership as an entrepreneur, crediting McCain and his family with transforming New Brunswick by providing jobs with his humble french fry factory that grew into a multi-billion dollar empire.
"His business accomplishments alone are the stuff of legends," McKenna said, praising McCain's business savvy that helped him run two of Canada's largest companies.
"A few more Wallace McCains in New Brunswick and we'd be sending (equalization) cheques back to Alberta."
Later in his speech, McKenna noted McCain's love for his home province and community. The funeral in Toronto was broadcast live to two churches in McCain's hometown of Florenceville, N.B.
McKenna explained that McCain was more comfortable in the potato fields of New Brunswick than the Bay Street boardrooms of Toronto, the city where he will be buried.
"Toronto will claim his body but his heart is in New Brunswick," McKenna added.
But McCain's four children remembered him as as a fun dad who loved his wife of 56 years, always made time for dinner with his kids, loved to be called "grampy" by his grandkids, and was still cracking jokes even as he crept closer to death.
Michael McCain, one of Wallace's four children and chief executive at Maple Leaf Foods, said he phoned his father every day at 7:30 a.m., just to hear his voice.
"My greatest blessing in life was the opportunity to say my father was my parent, my mentor, my boss, my business partner and my best friend all in one lifetime. How rare is that?"
"He was a doer, not a talker and he persevered," Michael McCain said in his tribute.
It was that determination that McCain and his brother Harrison used to found McCain foods back in 1956, building that one french fry plant into a global frozen foods empire with $6 billion in yearly sales and produces the most frozen fries than any other company worldwide.
Wallace was one of Canada's richest men, with an estimated personal net worth of $2.3 billion, but he often gave tens of millions of his own money away to organizations such as the National Ballet School, hospitals, early childhood programs and universities, with little fanfare.
He once said that even though he liked making money, he loved giving it away even more.
"What he's done in terms of early learning, in terms of the ballet and all of his philanthropic activities, he was a great business man but he was really a great Canadian as well," said former prime minister Paul Martin after the funeral.
In 1994, Wallace McCain left the company after a falling out with his brother Harrison over who would head the company. The brothers, who'd been inseparable most of their lives, reconciled well before Harrison's death in 2004.
Although he still owned a third of McCain Foods, Wallace McCain went on to head the then-faltering Maple Leaf Foods and was credited with helping it grow to more than 21,000 employees.
Finance minister Jim Flaherty said after the funeral that McCain was a role model for young Canadian entrepreneurs.
One of the things he probably would've said today is let's get on with this ceremony because he wasn't a patient man. But that's the tribute to his success," he said.
"He built two big businesses in the world, just a remarkable life."
Federal Liberal MP Bob Rae said he and McCain were close friends later on in McCains' life.
"He was fearless. The difficult building of his business with his brother and then the split which was very painful," he said.
"And then coming to Toronto and starting all over again...having the courage to start up a new business and take it on a very creative way."
McCain is survived by his Margaret, his four children and nine grandchildren.
