INTELLIGENCER PHOTO BY HENRY BURY Wilf Wilkinson, founder of Wilkinson &. Company LLP, right, and managing partner, and some of their professionals shown here will be celebrating the firm's 40th anniversary this fall. The firm is now one of the largest regional public accounting operations in eastern Ontario, with offices in Belleville, Trenton and Kingston. It is the Quinte area that Wilkinson fell in love with and what prompted him to open his accounting firm in Trenton 40 years ago. He had grown fond of Trenton while employed as a junior partner with the Montreal firm, E.G. Leetham & Co. When the firm wanted to move him back to Montreal, Wilkinson decided to purchase the fledgling three-year-old practice in Trenton and opened it under his own name. He opened his practice at 71 Dundas St. West -- still home of the Trenton office 40 years later. Wilkinson opened a Belleville office in 1974, merging" with an accounting firm run by John Lewars. That same year, he acquired the Trenton office of Dunwoody and Company as well as the Belleville practice of McColl Turner & Company (its managing partner, Grant Harrison joined the Wilkinson firm). Over subsequent years, Wilkinson & Company purchased several sole practitioners in Belleville and Trenton and moved its Belleville office in 1994 to the former Park Theatre at 139 Front St. Wilkinson bought the Kingston office in 2001. Outside the firm, Wilkinson has been heavily involved in the community over the past four decades. He was a charter member of Loyalist College's board of governors and served for eight years, is a member of the Rotary Club of Trenton and trustee of the Rotary Foundation and serves as part-time executive director of the Quinte Ballet School and helped raise funds for its new building on Palmer Road. He is also on the fundraising committees for both the Trenton hospital and the RCAF Museum. The accounting firm honoured its founder by donating $25,000 to the Loyalist College building fund. The college, in turn, named its new lecture theatre after Wilkinson two years ago.