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Philip Alfred Chester
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Business executive.
Born at Derbyshire, England in 1896, he served in the King’s Royal Rifle Corps during the First World War. He trained as an accountant, joined the Hudson’s Bay Company in 1923 and was transferred to Winnipeg in 1924. He rose successively to the positions of Chief Accountant (1925-1930), General Manager (1930-1946), and Managing Director (1946-1959), retiring in the latter year. During his working life, he served on the boards of several national and international companies.
In 1925, he married Isabel Louise Ivey (1899-1987, daughter of Charles Henry Ivey) of London, Ontario and they had two children: David Andrew Chester (c1931-1998) and Susanne Chester (wife of Charles B. Loewen). He was a member of St. Luke’s Anglican Church. During the Second World War, from 1940 to 1945, he served as the first civilian Master-General of ordnance for the Canadian government. He also served on the Manitoba Flood Relief Committee in 1950 and on the boards of the Canadian Red Cross and Winnipeg General Hospital.
He died at the Health Sciences Centre on 23 August 1976.
See also:
“Something Dead Under the House”: Management Conflict in the Hudson’s Bay Company in the 1930s by Elliot Hanowski
Manitoba History, Number 65, Winter 2011
“Philip A. Chester,” Winnipeg Free Press, 25 August 1976, page 43.
Obituaryr, Winnipeg Free Press, 25 August 1976, page 57.
Obituary [Isabel Louise Chester], Winnipeg Free Press, 11 January 1988, page 26.
Obituary [David Andrew Chester], The Globe and Mail, 6 June 1998.
Dictionary of Manitoba Biography by John M. “Jack” Bumsted, Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 1999.
We thank James Arnett and Rachel Chester for providing additional information used here.
This page was prepared by Gordon Goldsborough.
Page revised: 25 March 2025
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