Edward Roper Curzon Clarkson

Edward Roper Curzon "ERC" Clarkson, (August 11, 1852 – April 4, 1931), was a Canadian accountant, insolvency receiver and reformer, and executive noted for serving as a senior partner with Clarkson Gordon & Co (eventually Ernst & Young Canada), founding the first chartered accounting institute in Canada which eventually became the Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants, serving as the CICA's first president. He was widely regarded in his obituaries as the first Canadian chartered accountant, and was a prominent member and president of the Toronto Board of Trade, an organisation which his father, Thomas Clarkson (Upper Canada) helped found and himself served as president through the 1850s. His son, Geoffrey Teignmouth Clarkson was noted for his specialism in banking audits and corporate rescue. Both were highly regarded within the Canadian business community. ERC was a prominent supporter of bankruptcy, insolvency, receivership and bank auditing reform and was a pioneer in corporate rescues in Canada. He was known - according to Walter L. Gordon - as "the business doctor". ERC eventually convinced the financial institutions who sought his counsel in winding up situations to allow him to operate the failing business as a going concern through his appointment as a receiver. This was the precursor to an administrator in a trading insolvency. He advocated in several Board of Trade speeches for the reform of the Bankruptcy and Banking Acts to provide better support to banking depositors and creditors. His son's recommendations as liquidator of the Home Bank of Canada in 1923 following the collapse of the Home Bank of Canada set the groundwork for the creation of the Canada Deposit Insurance Corporation. Life and career