Accounting savvy a ticket to the world

Now with Engineers Without Borders, Malcolm McArthur chose a profession that took him from Kabul to the streets of Rio de Janeiro

Funny, that a man with a mind for mathematics should end up living his life guided by serendipitous signs.

The first sign came to Malcolm (Mac, for short) McArthur in the fall of 1970, on the Toronto subway: an advertisement for chartered accountants.

At the time, the son of an Imperial Oil employee was itching to travel - as he had done within Canada as a child and in Europe as a student - but young Mr. McArthur felt obliged to stay put and look after his newly widowed mother.

An accounting job would be a ticket to stay in the city, the math and economics major thought at the time. By 1973, Mr. McArthur had completed his chartered accountant exams at the Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants, winning the auditing prize for Ontario and ranking in the top 20 across the country.

His career choice ended up being a ticket to much more than Toronto, taking him across five continents and back, from the hills of Kabul to the streets of Rio de Janeiro.

"Travel was a priority and I was going to do that irrespective of how I was trained," Mr. McArthur says, looking back. "[My career] did facilitate it, as it turned out, in ways I never would have dreamed of."

Mr. McArthur, now 58 and the chief accountant of Toronto-based Engineers Without Borders Canada, spends his days working from home, in a former school house in rural Prince Edward County, Ontario.

"If you had told me 20 years ago that I'd be living in a rural school house in Ontario and dealing with university students I wouldn't have believed it," he says, referring to the fact that most of his friends are under the age of 25.

Engineers Without Borders Canada sends volunteers to Africa, where they work with local organizations in implementing development projects, from small-scale irrigation systems to lab technology (the group's past projects in Asia and South America are complete). It also runs 26 student chapters across Canada, whose members are involved in high-school outreach, public engagement and fundraising.

As chief accountant, Mr. McArthur is responsible for the organization's overall monthly financial reports, as well as training and advising the chapter presidents and finance officers on how to responsibly run their budget, which is often between $10,000 and $40,000.

It's funny, Mr. McArthur says, to think the founders of the non-governmental organization were only babies when he was working in Afghanistan, one of the many places he was sent by his employer at the time, Intercontinental Hotels.

That was the first job to take him overseas, a sign of things to come. After spotting a magazine advertisement for a travelling accountant, he was off.

Intercontinental's head office in New York put Mr. McArthur to work around the globe: internal audits in Europe, restoring a dilapidated accounting department in Kenya, and facilitating staff training throughout South America. By age 27, he was an assistant financial director based in Karachi, Pakistan, covering hotels in Iran, India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and, memorably, Afghanistan.

"It was one of the most stunningly beautiful countries I have ever seen. The people that I met were unfailingly polite and very civilized people, in their own way," he says of the country.

Mr. McArthur's time there was often a life full of opposites. "A few days in Kabul could include wandering into the hills and being invited into random rough homes for tea, and then a five-star dinner with the King's nephew that night," he remembers.

Of all the countries where his accounting skills have taken him, Afghanistan is one he would love to go back to, Mr. McArthur says. He recalls a photo taken by a group of children outside of Kabul: "I am fairly certain that out of those, let's say, dozen kids who were around me when that photograph was taken, that within 10 years of that photo most of them were either dead or in refugee camps after the Soviets came . ... I take Afghanistan very personally."

His travels came to an end due to a different kind of personal connection: he fell in love while working for Intercontinental in Australia. He moved there to live with his partner and spent nearly eight years, between 1977 and 1984, working in the tourism and travel industry.

In 1986, with the relationship over and an ailing mother in Canada, the 37-year-old accountant made the trip back to Toronto.

George Roter was still a kid when Mr. McArthur returned to Canada. But by the time Mr. Roter grew up and, at the age of 23, co-founded Engineers Without Borders Canada in 2000, Mr. McArthur had already worked as an accountant for two other organizations, Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) and Free the Children.

Shortly after reading a newspaper article about Engineers Without Borders, Mr. McArthur contacted Mr. Roter, and their first meeting could be seen as a sign of things to come. "[Mr. Roter] indicated that a primary goal was the development of young Canadians into citizens with a global perspective and responsibility ... Sold," recalls Mr. McArthur.

Before long, he was the organization's chief accountant, first as a volunteer and recently as a paid staff member.

"Right from the get-go. ... . [Mac] makes sure that stuff that needs to happen, gets done," says Mr. Roter.

In the past six years, Engineers Without Borders has grown in revenue to $2-million, up from $65,000 in 2001, Mr. McArthur says.

The group sends 80 volunteers overseas each year, almost all of whom will be in contact with Mr. McArthur during their postings, says Mr. Roter.

"He's up at three in the morning answering e-mails from people across the country and around the world on finance-related questions, and sending them back a recipe for squash soup at the same time."

Though Mr. McArthur hasn't been abroad since a trip to Russia in 1998, his experiences - both personal and professional - help him relate to Engineers Without Borders' far-flung volunteers and their work.

"I was a citizen of the world," he says. Now, though physically settled, "mentally, I'm certainly moving around the world."