Duncan chartered accountant, former board chair, honoured with Lifetime Achievement Award

VANCOUVER – Prominent Vancouver Island based Chartered Accountant, J.S. (Woody) Hayes, FCA, was honoured with a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Institute of Chartered Accountants of BC (ICABC). The award recognizes chartered accountants for sustained distinction in career, community service, and work within the CA profession.

Hayes qualified as a Chartered Accountant in 1973, and subsequently worked for Westpres Publications. As the controller and general manager, he oversaw the publication of weekly newspapers in Duncan, Powell River, Sechelt, Victoria, and Parksville.

In 1975, Hayes returned to public practice and became a founding partner of Hayes Stewart Little & Company. With eleven partners and staff complement of forty-five, this firm is now the largest independent regional accounting firm on Vancouver Island. Hayes oversaw two regional expansions: the first in 1982, with the opening of the Nanaimo office, and the second in 1998, with the establishment of a location in Victoria.

Hayes was also a founding member of the Duncan CA Club, and served as its first president. The Club is still in operation today, and hosts the ICABC executive tour every autumn.

In 1986, Hayes led a community initiative to bring Malaspina University-College (now Vancouver Island University) to the Cowichan Valley. He was subsequently asked to serve on the institution’s board of governors, and became board chair in 1989. He also contributed to the institution as a co-founder of the Malaspina University College Foundation, where he set up the Woody Hayes Award for Business students.

For over a decade Hayes has been involved in a number of health-care related initiatives on Vancouver Island. He served as a director of the Vancouver Island Health Authority (VIHA) for five years, and was a member of its finance, audit, and health quality committees.

Hayes is a long-time volunteer with the ICABC. He has served on Council as both a member and president, and was a member of the executive; he sat on the Presidential Nominating Committee, the CA Education Foundation, and chaired the Government Relations, Public Practice and Regulatory Policy Committees.

He has also served for many years as an Institute media representative, regularly providing insight and commentary on financial and economic issues to the CBC and other news sources.

In 2002, his work on behalf of the VIHA and the ICABC garnered him the Queen’s Golden Jubilee Medal. In 2010 he was recognized again with a Black Tie Lifetime Achievement Award from the Duncan-Cowichan Chamber of Commerce.

In 2011 Hayes was selected to become a lay member of The Law Society of BC Discipline Panel.

Hayes became an FCA in 1991; the Lifetime Achievement Award is open to Fellows (FCAs) of the CAs of B.C.

In his non-professional time Woody enjoys skiing at Mt. Washington and is an avid sailor competing this year in the Swiftsure Yacht Race aboard his 45 foot Beneteau – First Sight. He and his wife Marlene reside in Duncan. His grown children, Brooke and John, are residents of Victoria.

The Institute of Chartered Accountants of British Columbia is the training, governing and regulatory body of B.C.'s 11,000 members and just over 1,800 CA students. The Institute carries out its primary mission to protect the public by enforcing the most demanding admission criteria and the highest professional and ethical standards. Thanks to the quality and rigour of their education and training, CAs are recognized internationally for bringing superior financial expertise, strategic thinking, business insight and leadership to organizations.