Frank S. Capon: Canadian pioneer.

• Position: FEI Leaders - Obituary

Controllers and financial people as a group have a better understanding of the corporate entity, what makes it run and what may cause its downfall than does any other group. And thus, we have a greater responsibility than any other group to come to its defense."

So said Frank S. Capon in a speech in 1961, in the midst of his two-year term as president and then chairman of the Controllers Institute of America (CIA). Capon, who died in late April at age 88, was unique in the annals of the organization that the following year became the Financial Executives Institute: He was the only Canadian ever to lead FEI or its predecessor. A former treasurer and later vice president and director of DuPont Canada Ltd., Capon was instrumental in getting the name changed, arguing that opening up the association and changing the name was "needed to keep it healthy and strong for the future."

A member in recent years of the Atlantic Provinces Chapter, Capon had been an FEI member for almost 57 years. He was assistant treasurer of Canadian Industries Ltd. in Montreal in 1947 when he applied for, and was accepted for, membership in what was then the CIA. He then signed up a number of local financial executives and helped launch the Montreal Chapter in December 1948; he was its first president...