The Saint John River wanders through New Brunswick's best potato-growing country. Inside a modern processing plant at Florenceville, tonnes of potatoes are washed, peeled by steam, sliced, cooked, and frozen.

The frozen french fries are packaged and loaded into freezer trucks for delivery to restaurants and food stores across Canada.

In 1957, two brothers, Wallace and Harrison McCain, used $100,000 of their inheritance of the McCain family seed potato business to build their first frozen french fry plant. Today, from its world headquarters in Florenceville, the company operates 50 processing plants on four continents. The geographical expansion of its operations around the world has been accompanied by a mushrooming of its product line to include vegetables, pizza, desserts, fiddleheads, and other foods.

The company's success demonstrates how the right mix of local resources, modern technology, and ambition can bring prosperity to entrepreneurs and their communities.

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