He died young, but could scarcely have departed at a time when he was higher in public esteem.
Eulogists at Fred Mitchell’s funeral called him “a giant”, “a true friend to working people”, the “underdog who wins”, and “unbelievable Fred Mitchell.”
As controlling shareholder and long-time president of hog processor Intercontinental Packers Ltd. in Saskatoon, Mitchell, 51, won an Entrepreneur of the Year award for the Prairies less than two weeks before his death.
He had just signed a contract with his unionized workers in which they voluntarily agreed to reduce wages for new workers, keeping good relations and avoiding ugly strikes and lockouts like those that occurred at Maple Leaf and Fletcher’s Fine Foods in the last year.
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Mitchell had refinanced his company, almost completed a major expansion, and had expanded his distribution of foods to stores in much of Canada.
But his own survival of a fatal disease and his family’s escape from certain death 50 years before are the most dramatic events in the history of a family that is one of the best known in Saskatchewan business.
Mitchell’s grandfather Fred Mendel was born in Germany in 1888. He inherited a slaughter house in Eastern Europe in 1912, when he was 24, which he operated until 1940. He had to flee Europe when the Second World War broke out. Mendel was Jewish and the Nazis made no room for Jews in their “New Order.”
Mendel saved his family by emigrating to Canada. He began another meat packing business in Saskatoon, becoming one of the city’s largest employers. Eventually Intercon expanded to several operations in a number of locations.
Mendel mentored his grandson Fred Mitchell in the arts of the meat-packing business, showing him how to operate a plant and, his admirers say, how to keep workers’ loyalty while running a profitable company.
Mendel died in 1976 and Mitchell took over as president. Mitchell, whose father Cameron Mitchell was a Hollywood actor, had grown up in Los Angeles and attended an American university, but spent a number of summers working in the Saskatoon plant.
In 1986 Mitchell was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis. Doctors gave him five years to live. In 1990, debilitated by the condition, he underwent a heart/double lung operation that few expected him to survive.
But survive he did and he returned to the company.
In 1995, strained relations with his mother, sister and brother erupted in a wrongful dismissal lawsuit filed by Mitchell, and a countersuit from his family.
Mitchell claimed he’d been frozen out of any real influence in the company. His family countered that Mitchell and his wife had put personal expenses on company credit cards.
Fred Mitchell left the company, returning in 1997 after his family divided up its property and gave him the Saskatoon plant.
He fought to rebuild the financially reeling concern. While resisting overtures from other companies interested in buying Intercon, Mitchell found new financing from Taiwanese investors and Saskatchewan’s hog marketing agency, allowing him to refinance and expand.
He died from complications during a routine procedure at Stanford University Hospital in San Francisco on Oct. 17.
Mitchell’s funeral brought together the leaders of Saskatchewan’s hog industry, business and politics. Hundreds of active and retired meat packers also attended, and union leader Maurice Werezak praised their former boss.
“It was as though workers were Fred’s lifeblood,” said Werezak.
Worker and union official Albert Balfour, contacted soon after Mitchell’s death, said Mitchell had always been a good employer, but seemed to become more caring after coming back to the company in 1997.
“We felt he was pretty well the best,” said Balfour. “We’re going to try to follow the legacy Fred set down.”
Saskatchewan hog producers are also hoping Intercon, now controlled by Mitchell’s wife LuAn, can follow the path the two Freds laid out. The plant buys more than half of all hogs produced in Saskatchewan and the producer marketing board built a close relationship with Mitchell.
“He left the company in darned good shape,” said Don Hrapchak of SPI Marketing Group. “His legacy will live on many, many years to come.”
