Started in Hamilton in 1954 by Edward Patrick
Nolan C.A. after a distinguished career in the RAF, Paddy as he was
known by his clients and friends, built a successful chartered accountancy
practice. Over the many years he was in practice, clients respected
his professionalism, integrity and honesty. In 1981, Rick Hoecht became
his associate and the firm took on a new approach driven by the changing
technology and the demands of a growing client base. In 1997 upon Paddy's
retirement Tim Galvin was made a partner of the firm.
Paddy Nolan a role model
for many
Distinguished Flying Medal winner became respected accountant
BY JAMES ELLIOTT
The Spectator
Paddy
Nolan was a principled man, not the least when it came to accounting.
As first auditor of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Hamilton in the
late 1950s, he found some parish priests -- used to doing things
their own way -- resisting his attempts to impose modern accounting
standards.
One older priest, responding to a particularly
blunt letter from the young auditor, phoned Nolan and, in the heat
of anger, told him, "You'll never find a priest to bury you."
How far the priest was wrong was clearly
evident 40 years and an estimable accounting career later, when
he was buried -- not by one priest, but threee. And a bishop.
Nolan, 81, died Feb. 6 in St. Joseph's Hospital of kidney disease. Edward
Nolan, the eldest of 10 children, was born in County Kerry in Ireland
on the farm that had been in the family for 300 years.
He was educated at Redemptorist College
in Limerick and immigrated to England during the 1930s, then left
a waiter's job at London's posh Savoy hotel to join the RAF in 1939. He flew 30 bombing
operations over Europe as navigator and observer in antiquated Whitleys
and Fairey Battles, and dropped parachutists behind enemy lines
in North Africa and Italy. By 1941, he had won the Distinguished
Flying Medal, presented by King George VI, acquired the lifelong
nickname of Paddy, and been transferred to the Commonwealth Air
Training Plan at Mount Hope as an instructor.
Characteristically modest about his wartime
exploits, Nolan, when asked in later years how he got the DFM, would
quip, "I bought the CO (commanding officer) a drink."
While stationed at Mount Hope, he met and
married Kay McManus, the widow of a Canadian Spitfire pilot, before
another transfer to British Columbia for training on amphibious
bombers and a return to England in the spring of 1945.
Early the following year, he was reunited
with his wife and fmaily in Hamilton and made the career choice
that would shape the rest of his life.
Although acccepted by both Osgoode Hall
for law and Queen's University for engineering, Nolan opted to try
his hand at accounting. The university courses didn't start for
several months and there was an immediate opening with a local firm.
After qualifying as a chartered accountant and starting his own
firm in 1952, Nolan never looked back and, over the next four decades,
established one of the city's pre-eminent independent accounting
firms.
One of his first clients, realtor Ron Cupido, was immediately impressed
by his integrity. "Totally above reproach," he remembers.
Anyone looking to deviate from the straight
and narrow "would get a no co-operation from Paddy."
And for Cupido, Nolan became not only his
accountant but friend and confidante. "If you knew Paddy, you
liked the guy and grew to love him. He was a very frugal man --
no matter how much money you made, he didn't think you should spend
it."
For Leona Hudecki, Nolan was the only accountant
she and her late husband ever had because "we knew what Paddy
said was right from the heart. When he told you something, you could
trust it."
Another client and fellow Irishman, John
McKenna, echoes those sentiments. "He was a great accountant.
He wouldn't let you get away with anything. You had to respect him
for his standards and his principles. A lovely man."
Although he never made it to Queen's, something
of the engineer endured, for, in 1961, Nolan designed a steel swimming
pool for the backyard of his Inglewood Drive home.
Edward (Paddy)
Nolan flew 30 bombing missions for the RAF. He retired last year
from a distinguished accounting career
The pool, really
a huge steel tub, was built by a Burlington Street steel fabricator
and its airborne delivery and installation by two large cranes caused
a monumental traffic jam in the southwest that, in turn, provoked
an editorial in
The Spectator headlined, "The case of the Stalled Swimming
Pool."
In 1973, Nolan hired Abdul Din, a refugee
from Idi Amin's Uganda, as an accountant. Dins says he found "a
sympathetic and very understanding human being. He gave me a lot
of emtional support. After a couple of years, he was no longer a
boss, he became a very good friend."
Nolan, he says, had a keen interest in other
cultures and in sharing his own.
"I remember that very first year I
came into the office and he said, 'Abdul, where is your green tie?
Don't you know it's St. Patrick's Day?' I went at lunchtime -- out
of respect for him -- I changed my tie. And he was so happy."
For Paul Jaggard, a senior partner with
the accounting firm of Ernst and Young, Nolan was a role model for
balancing professional standards and community service.
"To start as a one-man band and build
a team that works with him and then have that team buy him out and
carrry on the good name, really speaks volumes to what he instilled
in those people. Frankly, that doesn't happen very often."
Nolan continued to work until his retirement
last year. He is survived by his wife, Kathleen; two sons, Dermot
and John, both Hamilton lawyers; and one daughter, Mary, a reporter
with The Spectator. James Elliott can
be reached at 526-2444 or by email at: jelliott@ham.southam.ca
