ABSTRACT
This chapter draws on journals and internal documents of various associations, commissioned histories, newspaper accounts, interviews and a small number of brief academic papers on the history of the profession. The Canadian accounting profession is predated only by the accounting associations of Scotland and England. The first accounting organizations in Canada appeared in 1879 only twenty years or so after the first associations in Great Britain and three years ahead of the first accounting association in the United States. The construction of a chronology such as this inevitably involves choices about which events are “significant” in the history of the profession. The Canadian Accountants Association is formed under the sponsorship of John Leslie, Assistant Comptroller, Canadian Pacific Railways. In particular, women, accountants in industry and senior practicing public accountants found access to the Institutes was blocked. As the Institutes gained in public esteem and legal privileges, non-members could perceive a degradation of their own position.
