T.H. Frankling
The Mysterious Fountainhead of CGA Ontario

To the CGAs who recall him to this day, T.H. Frankling was the intimidating epitome of power and success. He was also a man of substantial mystery. “He made me very nervous,” recalls Art Bond, FCGA, who was interviewed by Frankling in the 1950s. “I wanted to be on my best behaviour.”

“My memory of him was a waistcoat with a fob and chain in the pocket,” says Harold Garland, FCGA. “He was always Mister Frankling. Never ‘Tom’ or even ‘T.H.’”

It’s an impression echoed by Herb Perry, FCGA, who recalls Frankling’s starched white collars and expensive, three-piece suits. “He was a dry old stick. Always addressed as Mister Frankling. No one even knew what ‘T.H.’ stood for.”

The impressions of other CGAs are vaguer, perhaps less reliable: the long nose and high forehead of a Victorian accountant; never out of doors without his fedora; “the only time I saw Frankling without a cigar in his mouth was at his funeral.”

The picture that is painted from these fragments is of a man who was a mystery to even the CGAs who knew him. It’s a picture that is further complicated by two pointed questions that add to his mystery: why do some CGAs still refer to T.H. Frankling as T.H. Franklin, and just how many medals are there that bear Frankling’s name?

Like the mystery of the man himself, these are conundrums that were destined to last forever, until the archival research of CGA Ontario painted in the details, in celebration of A Half Century of Leadership.

Thomas Hudson Frankling was born in England in 1887—during the latter days of the reign of Queen Victoria—and throughout his adult years he retained the formal, patrician bearing of the Victorian era.

He was educated in England but came to Canada in 1912, where he established his own accounting firm. In Professor Reginald Stuart’s The First Seventy-Five Years: A History of the Certified General Accountants’ Association of Canada, Frankling is described as “a Montreal CGA.” No documentation exists that Frankling indeed settled in Montreal, but like other ambitious young men, he may have been drawn to Canada’s largest city at the time. In the early 20th century, Montreal was the nation’s economic centre, a nexus of transportation lines and home to the headquarters of Canada’s major corporations, wealthiest banks, and the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR). As such it was also the logical birthplace of the Certified General Accountants Association of Canada.

Just four years prior to Frankling’s arrival in Canada, three accountants working for the CPR—John Leslie, E.B. Manning and F.A. Cousins—had formed the General Accountants Association (GAA), with Leslie acting as its first president. By 1913, the Association was an unqualified success: it had a federal charter, an education program, and a membership of almost 100 accountants from more than 50 companies. While it is more likely that Frankling would have been aware of the GAA and its leaders if he had indeed settled in Montreal upon arriving in Canada— Frankling may even have met such legendary figures as John Leslie—his early years in Canada went unrecorded. What is inarguable, however, is that Frankling’s career was inextricably linked with the growth of the CGA designation in Ontario.

CGAs residing in Ontario had advocated for a Toronto Branch of the GAA as early as 1916, but had been rebuffed by the Dominion Board in Montreal for two reasons: low membership numbers and a wariness by the board of decentralization and its threat to the stability of the Association. By the early 1920s, however, membership in Ontario had grown to 35 CGAs, enough to warrant the formation of the Toronto Branch on November 29, 1921. The first meeting of the Branch was held on January 27, 1922. C.A. Mills was elected president. T.H. Frankling was elected director and general secretary.

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | NEXT