Howard B. Chase

Howard Brown Chase, CBE (19 May 1884 – 19 February 1973) was a British-born Canadian trade union leader and public official. He was chairman of the Board of Governors of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation from 1944 to 1945.

Life and career Chase was born in Essex, England on 19 May 1884, the son of an American father and an English mother who were visiting at the time. He began his career working on the Northern Pacific Railway at Fargo, working his way from the bottom to become a locomotive engineer. He came to Canada in July 1907 and worked as an engineer on the Canadian Northern Railway at Port Arthur, then for Canadian Pacific Railway and Canadian National Railway, transitioning from freight trains to passenger trains. When the Board was taken over by the Department of Munitions and Supply in 1940, Chase became its director general of labour relations, negotiating settlements in numerous strikes. In August 1941, he was appointed government controller of the National Steel Car Corporation in Hamilton, Ontario after a second strike, where he settled the strike and raised production by a third. In July 1944, he became chairman of the Board, succeeding René Morin. He was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire for his wartime work in 1946.

In 1948, Chase was appointed a member of the Board of Transport Commissioners, retiring in 1959.