July 25, 1984: Executive says Playgirl photos cost him his job
THIS DAY IN JOURNAL HISTORY
An unemployed Edmonton executive claimed posing nude for Playgirl magazine cost him his job as the Cross Cancer Institute’s personnel manager.
“They say they fired me because they didn’t have enough work,” 33-year-old bodybuilder Burl Chester, the magazine’s first Canadian centrefold, said. “The real reason is that they couldn’t live with a guy who posed nude for Playgirl.”
Dr. Neil MacDonald, the hospital’s executive director, denied the Playgirl exposure had anything to do with the decision to eliminate Chester’s job the previous August.
Budget restrictions meant no new positions were being created while few replacements were needed because staff members weren’t resigning during the recession, MacDonald said. That meant less work for the personnel manager, so the position, created early in 1982, was abolished to save money.
MacDonald challenged the ethics of reporting Chester’s unproven claim “just because Miss America is giving up her title and because it’s going to be a minor titillation to the public in Edmonton for a few days.”
Chester approached the Journal with his story after Miss America gave up her title when Penthouse published old nude photographs of her.
The bodybuilder posed for the pictures in 1979 while a student at Montreal’s McGill University. Playgirl paid $750 and featured his muscular physique in April 1980.
His three-piece-suit career unravelled after Playgirl unexpectedly reprinted the old photos in spring 1983.
“The nurses got hold of it,” Chester recalled. “I didn’t know why everyone was looking at me all of a sudden. People all around the hospital bought copies.”
Chester was afraid he’d be fired, but by the time he left for a month-long holiday in late June, curious glances were less frequent and people seemed to be losing interest, he told Journal reporter Rick Pedersen.
He returned to work to find his job had been eliminated.
After hospital officials declined his offers to work part time or take an unpaid leave, Chester was sure the photos cost him his job.
“I don’t deny my workload decreased,” he said. But “why was I singled out as the only person to be let go?”
MacDonald said no other executives were let go because the recession affected the personnel position most. He said the hospital didn’t keep Chester on part-time because there wasn’t enough work.
The Journal wasn’t able to learn where Chester is today. But Playgirl magazine published its last print issue in January/February 2009. It’s now an online monthly adult magazine.