Philip Alfred Conrad Chaplin

Born to an engineer and a mother from a seigneurial family. Migrated with the family to England in 1924. Schooled at Lord Williams's Grammar, Thame, Oxon. While an engineering student at University College, London, called up to serve in the Royal Navy in 1940. Served in the North Atlantic, Africa and Ceylon in WRESTLER, QUEEN ELIZABETH, ADAMANT & BERWICK. "Demobbed" as a petty officer, 1946. Returned to Montreal to study at McGill for a general BA and a BLS. Commissioned into the Special Branch of the RCNR, 1950. Civil servant with National Library and DND. Suspended from duties at H.M.C.S. Carleton for writing a press release that aggravated a split in Diefenbaker's ministry over Dief's disagreement with Harkness about arming the Bomarc. Retired to the Supplementary Reserve in 1964. On retirement from the Supp Res in 1979 was reputedly last Naval Control of Shipping officer to have actually sailed in convoy in war. Retired to carry on historical and genealogical research, 1982, as "Former Naval Person." Died as a result of a head injury sustained in a fall.

From obituary material.

Philip Alfred Conrad Chaplin died on 18 May 1992 of injuries sustained in a fall.

Philip was born in Montréal in 1919 to Charles John Chaplin, an engineer, and Lois Maria Gugy Geggie, the eldest child of a long-established Anglo-Quebec family. The Chaplin family moved to England in 1924 and soon settled in Buckinghamshire. Lord William's Grammar School in Thame was chosen for Philip about 1931, after he refused to follow his elder brothers to the durance vile of Dover College. Not particularly studious--except at French--he enjoyed history, cycling and rugby, and delighted in Scouting. The pinnacle of this last pursuit was being called out as a Rover Scout on the mobilization of the forces in 1939 to direct traffic in Oxford, where many constables were reservists and unavailable for police duty.

He left Thame in 1938 and entered City & Guilds College, University of London, to study engineering. He was not enjoying himself there when he received the invitation from His Majesty to join the war against Hitler in November 1939. He signed up in the Royal Naval Reserve as a "Hostilities Only" rating and learned to love life as a sailor, serving in H.M. Ships Wrestler, Queen Elizabeth, Adamant, Berwick and Sheffield. His sound schooling in science at Thame equipped him to work with the emerging technology of radar, and for much of the war he operated air and surface search systems aboard ship.

After demobilization, he worked his passage home to Canada in the cargo vessel S.S. Riverdale Park, and entered McGill University on Canada's veterans' education benefit. This arrangement required him to join the Royal Canadian Naval Reserve, so he resumed square rig as a member of the University Naval Training Division (the "Untidies") to earn a general B.A. and qualify as a librarian; upon graduation, he was also commissioned into the Special Branch of the RCNR. In 1950, he married Annemarie Hinton Harris of Ottawa, and they settled in Carleton County, the suburbs of Ottawa.

His penchant for reading history, his training as a librarian, and his wartime naval experience made him a natural choice for those offices of the Canadian armed forces responsible for historical research. After a brief engagement at the National Library, he joined the staff of the Naval Historian. After the unification of the Canadian Forces in 1968, he became a member of the Directorate of History at National Defence Headquarters, from which he retired in 1981 as Senior Research Officer. During his years at NDHQ, Philip collaborated with hundreds of authors, and his name appears in the acknowledgements of as many publications. He was himself published -- and even plagiarised -- in the United States Naval Institute Proceedings. In retirement, he hired himself out as a history researcher and editor, styling himself "Former Naval Person, Ltd."

In private life, Philip was an aficionado of Scottish country dance and a member of the Ardbrae Dancers of Ottawa. He volunteered for the Red Cross, first as a blood donor and then as help at clinics around Ottawa. He also helped out at the Bytown Museum where his wife had been Curator, cataloguing military artefacts. He had little artistic skill, but enjoyed a particular aesthetic that he applied to a life-long interest in heraldry; he was for many years the Corresponding Secretary of the Canadian Heraldry Society.

Philip's wife Annemarie died in 1980. He is survived by his two sons, both artillery officers, and his daughter, an editor. All three offspring have earned university degrees in history.