Chapter 5: A Profession Matures: 1951 to 1983
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When Canada entered the Cold War era, Canadians developed a new international awareness. The old association with Great Britain retained cultural and sentimental currency, but shrinking political and economic value. The continental linkages with the United States that produced simultaneous rapture and anxiety among many Canadians became the dominant force in Canadian life. Investments told part of this story. From 1939 to 1949 British monies in Canada declined from thirty-six percent to thirty-two percent of the total non-resident investment. The American share, by contrast, rose from sixty percent to seventy-four percent.
Canada was unable to develop a counterweight to American dominance. To be sure, Canadians cultivated Europe through traditional bilateral diplomacy and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization after 1949. But non-Communist Europe began to turn in on itself once reconstruction, mightily assisted by America's Marshall Plan financing, took hold. Europeans then made increasingly purposeful strides toward a regional economic system.
On a global scale, membership in the United Nations and a variety of international organizations brought Canadians into contact with other peoples and markets. These contacts ultimately proved valuable and important and helped to mature Canadians as global citizens, but they did little to offset United States economic power in North America.
By 1951, those who had wanted to restore their pre-1939 way of life realized that this could never be. Nostalgia seduces us into believing that the yesteryears were simpler and easier to cope with than contemporary complexities. But nostalgia is a cruel deceiver. The world changes and continues to change.
International political forces rarely intruded directly into the world of accountancy. CGAs sailed in sheltered waters for the most part, buoyed by the sense of confidence and order that characterize a maturing profession. The old goals — education, certification, self-help-had become institutionalized. The three-tiered federal structure, which was evident by 1951, remained as well, with increasing emphasis on the provincial level. But in many respects, the Association's centre of gravity was shifting.
Vancouver became the source of innovation for the Association. Following provincial incorporation in "951, B.C. CGAs pursued the educational program they had promised. Vancouver CGAs in particular had worked with the University of British Columbia since 1930, when UBC professors began to speak to CGA students in special seminars and lectures as part of the preparation for examinations. By the mid-1930s, the Vancouver branch bad classrooms at William MacLean's Western School of Commerce.
Twenty-three Vancouver CGAs endorsed a bank note for $100 each to underwrite the development costs of the education program specified in the provincial charter. Here, as in the charter quest, W.C. McCalpin was the major force. He would forge a link with UBC as significant for CGAs in the future as the old link with the Shaw School in Toronto had been in the past.
In 1950, McCalpin approached Professor Earl MacPhee, who had recently become director of UBC's School of Commerce. Although only on faculty for a few weeks, MacPhee had a distinguished background. After teaching high school in New Brunswick he had enlisted with the Acadia University volunteers to serve in France during World War I. After demobilization and graduate studies at Edinburgh University, he taught psychology at Acadia and the universities of Alberta and Toronto. In 1929, MacPhee changed careers and became a pioneer in scientific management as comptroller of England's York Knitting Mills. lie had come to UBC from Toronto.
MacPhee believed in extension education and wanted to take UBC "to the people." He found willing allies in the School of Commerce, especially professors James Moynes and Brian Burke. UBC had already rejected over forty requests for extension programs from various provincial groups, disliking the sponsor ship arrangements. This time, UBC's Board of Governors agreed because McCalpin's plan promised Vancouver CGA branch support as soon as the B.C. government granted a provincial charter.
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