Gordon Stanley (Stan) Chester was born on July 4, 1932 and grew up in the Kerrisdale neighbourhood of Vancouver, B.C. He attended Kerrisdale Elementary, Point Grey Junior High School and McGee Secondary School. After high school, Chester took a year off to take French at night school, in order to be able to meet the University of British Columbia’s (UBC) language requirement for enrolment, and worked on a fire suppression crew with the B.C. Forest Service. In the Fall, Chester enrolled at UBC, pursuing a degree in Agriculture. During the summer after his first year at university, he again worked for the B.C. Forest Service. When Chester returned for his second year at UBC, he switched to the Forestry program, graduating in 1956.

Chester’s first job after graduation was with the fire protection service out of Victoria, B.C., where he worked all over the province doing visibility mapping to locate lookout points. He then went to work for the fire protection group in Ottawa, Ontario, where he stayed for four years. In 1966, Chester returned to Vancouver Island, B.C. to work for Canadian Forest Products (Canfor) in the Englewood Logging Division as a fire control officer, with responsibility for all divisional fire control matters ensuring that all fire service prevention measures were met, as well as preparing all of the slash burning plans. In 1976, Chester moved his family to Vancouver, B.C. where he continued to work for Canfor. Chester spent approximately twenty years working for Canfor in Vancouver, where he was primarily responsible for stumpage – the price that a logging company pays to the province to harvest timber in a particular area. He retired in the late 1990s.

Throughout his career, Chester was very involved in supporting the field of forestry through the Association of B.C Forest Professionals and the Forest History Association of British Columbia, where he served as President.

Chester died on April 28, 2022.