Ivy Thomas, FCGA
The First Female Certified General Accountant

"We believed money and church, in that order, was her life,” recalls Kenneth Cox of his late aunt Ivy. “She had seen what poverty did to families in the Great Depression. She was not going to be held down in those Depression days like everybody else.” That resolve, borne from privation, defined Ivy Thomas, FCGA, Canada’s first female certified general accountant, and the youngest person ever to achieve the CGA designation.

The third of seven children born to Albert Edward Cox and Alice Victoria Pember, Ivy Alberta Thomas (née Cox) was born on May 28, 1911, in Toronto. As her parents’ given names suggest, the family traced it roots back to England, specifically the Shropshire region of England and the industrial town of Birmingham. Ivy’s grandfather, Samuel Cox, born in 1844, emigrated from England to Canada and settled in Toronto, where the Cox family would stay for the next two generations.

According to nephew Kenneth, Ivy was the child of “a family with no means…she and the rest of the family moved several times while growing up, as her father (a cabinet builder) was always out of work.” Cabinetry is a trade that depends upon economic health. Ivy’s father experienced particularly hard times during the Depression, raising seven children, four girls and three boys.

As a child, Ivy was a “real bookworm.” She loved school and was active in community affairs. She also worked after school and on weekends at a candy store. She was ambitious, and recognized that two traits might help her to advance economically: frugality and inquisitiveness, manifested as a passion for education. Again, in the words of nephew Kenneth, “she saved every penny—her education was the only valuable thing in her life, she was not going to be held down.”

Ivy attended the Central High School of Commerce in Toronto, where she took a three year course in general business training, then worked in the business office of the University of Toronto. Given that, prior to the 1960s, a university education was generally affordable only to the children of wealthy parents, it is unlikely that Ivy enrolled in classes. However, her experience in the business office undoubtedly contributed to her landing a secretarial position at the office of Thomas Hudson Frankling, the certified general accountant whose influence led Ivy to achieve the status of the first female CGA.

The United States was the first Western nation to admit women into the profession of accounting. Ironically, that first woman was Canadian: Christine Ross, who was born in Nova Scotia in 1898, sat for the certified public accounting exam in New York State and became the first female CPA in 1899. Her clients included women’s organizations, wealthy women and those in fashion and business, but by 1922 Christine Ross had married and was living as Mrs. Christine Barker in Toronto.

In 1902, New Zealand became the first country within the British Commonwealth to admit women into an accounting body. Meanwhile, in Britain, it took an act of legislation—the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act of 1919—to tear down barriers barring women from entering professions. This allowed Mary Harris Smith, who was refused admission into the accounting profession in 1888, to become the first chartered accountant in the world, in 1919.

Employment discrimination, however, is rarely removed by legislation; it ebbs and flows with economic waves. During World War I, as men were drawn out of the labour force and into the war effort, women won positions in non-traditional labour roles. Yet once the war was over, men expected to return to their former roles, which roiled social tensions and spurred the women’s movement. In 1918, Canada passed the Women’s Franchise Act, permitting all female citizens to vote in federal elections). Not surprisingly, the Act spurred many professions into reactionary discrimination, perhaps fearing that an influx of women would create greater competition for work, resulting in lower fees and salaries. In 1921, CGA Canada decided by a vote of 44 to three that “it was not in the interest of the Association to admit women.”

Yet attitudes were changing rapidly. In 1922, Eulalie Herkin of Lockport, Nova Scotia, followed in the footsteps of fellow Nova Scotian Christine Ross to become the first female chartered accountant in Canada. Women had yet to break into the professional accounting ranks in Canada’s two most powerful provinces, Ontario and Quebec, but the ground was shifting in the favour of pioneers like Ivy Thomas, backed by visionaries such as T.H. Frankling.

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