Donald C. Johnston, CA

Don is a character of the first order, always looking for trouble, with a twinkle in his eye. He married Lorna Jamieson (daughter of the late R. A. Jamieson, QC). Don worked as accountant to many of the successful local business people, though he maintained his office in Bells Corners on Richmond Road, not in Smiths Falls, where he lived.

He was well-known as a “creative” accountant, someone who wasn’t afraid to propose some scheme, often one which made one pause to consider its legitimacy; but he was also ingenious where, for example, he proposed that two lay persons buy a the charter of an ancient pharmacy, which normally must have qualified Pharmacists as its Shareholders and Directors but which was grandfathered under the legislation to permit lay persons to own all the common shares, and who then emasculated the Board of Directors by a Unanimous Shareholder Agreement, while employing a qualified and licensed pharmacist as director of the corporation and supervisor of the drug counter I have no idea where he even heard of such a scheme, except that it may have been marketed by a broker with the background intelligence.

That business, by the way, went the way of so many others where the owner is not in the driver’s seat (except on paper), as it turned out that paying the succession of pharmacists to do what they did outweighed the advantage of owning the common shares and effectively directing the company but it illustrates my point.