Harold Garland, FCGA

Harold Ernest Garland, FCGA, is the living refutation of the stereotypical accountant.

A war hero who rose to the position of assistant deputy minister at the Canada Revenue Agency, he is universally known as “Harry Garland” to friends and acquaintances alike, typically bringing a smile to everyone’s face whenever he is mentioned.

Harry Garland was born in 1918. As a teenager in the 1930s, he took accounting courses with the Credit Institute of Canada, an important institution during the 1930s due to the increase in collections during the Great Depression. He was working as an accountant and bookkeeper for Independent Electric in Toronto when World War Two was declared, and enlisted in the Royal Canadian Air Force just days short of turning 21.

Harry flew a two-engine Vickers Wellington, a medium bomber British air forces lovingly called a “Wimpy,” after the hamburger-obsessed J. Wellington Wimpy of the Popeye cartoons. American air forces less charitably called the Vickers Wellington a “canvas-covered coffin.” In the spring of 1943, Harry was returning from a mission, when the plane—which had been flying askew for some time—lost altitude just before the English Channel, in Rouen, France. Captured by the Nazis, he was imprisoned in the infamous prisoner-of-war (POW) camp, Stalag Luft III, and took part in the escape plan dramatized in the Hollywood movie The Great Escape.

The plan to build three escape tunnels from the camp was already in place when Harry arrived. He was enlisted as a “penguin,” so-called for the great coats worn by the POWs to disguise bags of excavated sand tied to their trousers; Harry would wander the prison yard and gardens, discreetly scattering sand in his wake. In a 2006 interview conducted by Statements, Harry remembered the ingenuity of his fellow POWs: “the guys had tapped into the camp’s electrical grid in order to have light in the tunnels, but they’d also made candles for when the electricity failed. The wax was made from margarine. The wicks from pyjama cord.”

150 POWs, including Harry, were poised to escape Stalag Luft III on March 24, 1944. The order of the escapees was a meticulously planned as the escape itself: those who knew the countryside, local customs and languages were chosen to escape first. Harry’s position was 89th. In the end, only 76 POWs had time to escape, and all but three were captured. An incensed Adolph Hitler ordered a ruthless retribution: 50 POWs were executed, including six Canadians.

In January 1945, fearful that approaching Russian troops would liberate the POWs, Hitler ordered the evacuation of Stalag Luft III in an attempt to keep the POWs as hostages. The forced march through snow and icy winds in the dead of winter was “harder on most of the men than our time in camp” Harry recalled. The evacuation lasted for three days, and included a harrowing railway ride through frozen countryside and bombed-out cities in cars that could hold 40 men but were packed with 50 to 60. Three months later, the camp to which the POWs had been transferred was liberated by American troops and Harry returned to Canada, only to face a dilemma particularly disturbing to an accountant.

“I had a problem getting out of the Air Force. Money had been deducted from my pay and put into the militia pension, including the two years that I’d been a prisoner of war. I was told that if I wanted out of the Air Force, I had to sign off on that money. It was about 900 bucks—back then that would have bought a new car. So I had to stay in the Air Force until 1946, when the Militia Pension Act was changed.”

Harry’s accounting career began in earnest with a job as an assessor in the Toronto office of the provincial tax department. “It was the one job where, if I couldn’t get out of service right away, they didn’t mind waiting,” he explained. Unfortunately, he was working in an office alongside dozens of accountants with professional designations. “I knew that if I wanted to be promoted, I needed a professional designation. I was married, with children, and I could ill afford to leave the job at the tax department. The CGA program of professional studies was accommodating to former servicemen like myself, and I knew that the designation would provide me with the right credentials for the public sector.”

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