T.H. Frankling
The Mysterious Fountainhead of CGA Ontario
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Harold Garland recalls a similar experience. He and a friend, Vic Thompson, CGA, wrote the intermediate exam in 1948, and received the highest marks in Ontario, an accomplishment for which Frankling personally visited Harold at his home and presented him with “an accountant’s handbook, a big thing, as a prize for the examination results.” Nevertheless, Frankling brooded over the results and wasn’t satisfied.
“Vic Thompson was up to see T.H. Frankling after the results,” Harold explains, “and Frankling said, ‘Hey, your friend [Harold] got the highest marks, but they’re not very good. They’re lower than what they are across Canada!”
Frankling’s dedication—again, some would say obsession—with the candidates and their scores was well-known among the CGAs, and perhaps something of a trial by fire that bonded them together. “Frankling looked at survey and exam results,” Harold Garland continues. “He was always interested in all the percentages and how people made out and didn’t. He was that kind of a guy, he was academic.”
Nevertheless, Garland is quick to point out a different side of Frankling: “He was—how would I say?—a sort of a gentlemanly, reserved, type guy. He wasn’t effusive. He wasn’t bombastic in the least. He was most sincere.”
His thoughts are echoed by George Spence, CGA, who was interviewed in 1993 for a special archive issue of the Association magazine, Statements. Recalling his days as a student in the CGA program in the 1940s, George wrote “Studying by correspondence I spent many a night at home with my nose glued to the books. I recall having correspondence with T.H. Frankling, who gave me encouragement and answered my many concerns.”
The one portrait photograph that survives of Frankling suggests this gentler side of the legend. Despite the memories of CGAs who recall him with an ever-present cigar, Frankling chose to be photographed with a pipe, suggesting a contemplative, professorial personality, balancing the expensive clothing of a successful man of business. Perhaps his reservation, his Victorian formality, contributed to the mystery of a man who was also quietly academic, but it was also a different time, when personal details were shared only between the best of friends, and rarely with those of a younger generation.
The Final Years
Thomas Hudson Frankling was in his sixties during the 1950s, when it became apparent to many CGAs that Leonard Brooks, who would become the first president of CGA Ontario, was his natural successor. On Tuesday, July 5, 1955, while visiting his daughter Jean in Newfoundland, Frankling died. Obituaries in the Toronto Star and Globe and Mail reported that Thomas Hudson Frankling—“known as T.H. all his life”—was survived by Annie Frankling, as well as a brother and sister still living in England. His funeral was held at St. Paul’s Anglican Church in Runnymede, where his daughter had married, and he is interred at Park Lawn Cemetery in Toronto.
Shortly after her husband’s death, Annie Frankling donated a fund to Toronto Branch to “perpetuate the memory of her husband and to honour each year the top graduating Ontario student.” Herb Perry, who would soon become the executive secretary (director) of the newly incorporated CGA Ontario, recalled that Annie Frankling had donated the sum of $100 annually to the Association, but “didn’t anticipate inflation.” As the years went by, the hundred dollars no longer paid for the minting of the medal, and the costs were assumed by the Association.
The creation of the T.H. Frankling medal led to further confusion—and not simply because researchers could easily confuse the medal with the prize awarded by Frankling in 1926. In the 1970s, CGA Canada introduced senior year options to the CGA program, and concurrently created its own finalist Gold Medal. It became possible—indeed, it happened often—that an Ontario student won “the Frankling” in the same year as a student from another province won the top national award. There was even a year (1976) when top honours were garnered by two students from Ontario.
Both CGAs and students were perpetually perplexed by the paradox; how could two students (sometimes in different provinces!) win the top student award for examinations that were nationally standardized? The logical answer—the creation of senior year options that allowed students to specialize in different accounting fields and thus receive different awards for high examination marks—did little to dispel the added layer of confusion added to Frankling mystery.
Today, the T.H. Frankling Medal is awarded to the candidate for admission into membership of CGA Ontario who obtains the highest average in Financial Accounting 4, plus two other PACE-level exams.
Ultimately, and when placed within the context of accumulated facts, the mystery of T.H. Frankling and the paradoxes of his personality—Victorian conservatism and 20th Century foresight, gentlemanly decorum and the intimidation of power—are not difficult to reconcile.
Frankling was utterly devoted to the CGA designation and the success of the Association in Ontario. Passionate about promoting professionals who were worthy of the designation, Frankling could intimidate young men on one hand, while on the other, promote and defend a young woman when the odds were against her success. He wanted only the best for the Association, and demanded the same from aspiring certified general accountants.
Today, it is utterly fitting that Thomas Hudson Frankling is best known for the gold medal that bears his name. It’s an award that distinguishes excellence among potential CGAs, thus honouring the legacy of a legend: the mysterious fountainhead of CGA Ontario who cared deeply about his designation and the men and women who aspired to its title.
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