John Hugh Gillis - Health Issues

Health Issues

On 17 September 1910, Jack Gillis suddenly resigned his position as first-class constable with a salary of $1,200 (Barbara Fenwick, Archivist, Vancouver Police Museum). The Vancouver Police Force had provided him with a useful profession, a good income, the opportunity to be an important member of its sports team, and leave and funds for travelling to various contests, sometimes distant, in track and field. Why did he resign? His departure was one month after his triumph at the Toronto Police Games and a month and four days after coming so close to winning the North-American all-round gold medal. Feeling vaguely unwell, losing weight and always so tired, he did not know what was wrong with him. The Toronto Star reporter had called him spare. He was.

Announcing the all-round championship The Daily World of 5 August 1911, sports page, mentioned “Vancouver’s star athlete” and added, “Jack had intended to train early for this year’s championship but later abandoned the intention.” He went to work for Customs but had no longer the energy to go out socially. Gradually he grew worse: coughing, low fever, cold sweat at night, poor appetite, wasted appearance. On 9 December 1911 Dr, Kennedy admitted him to the sanitarium at Tranquille, near Kamloops (Admission Book, Anti-Tuberculosis Society Records, 1907–1947. BC Archives, MS-1916, vol. 7).

The disease that crept up on Jack Gillis was tuberculosis, which for centuries had caused distressing illness and claimed many lives. European cities were losing one in seven citizens to the “white plague”. Four out of five North Americans became infected before age twenty and five percent of them became ill a year or two after being infected. Early in the twentieth century it affected young and old and was the single most common cause of death.

The Inland Sentinel of 8 December 1911 welcomed John Gillis:

"A well known and popular figure in the athletic world arrived here yesterday from the coast in the person of J.H. Gillis, holder of the all-round amateur championship of Canada. Gillis is a fine type of Canadian manhood, standing six feet four inches in height, and while at present he’s not just up to his usual weight he expects the local climate and the training he enters into will soon have the effect of putting him into top class shape again. He intends to spend several months here and the training he will undertake is in preparation for entry in the all-round Olympic championship of the world in Stockholm next year."

Jack suffered a spell of sadness and regret when the Fifth Olympic Games opened 5 May 1912. He would have been there but for this bad luck. In the decathlon, which had taken the place of the all-round, he would have enjoyed going up against the great Native American athlete Jim Thorpe. He was pleased that Canada won gold in swimming and the 10,000 metre walk. He cheered when Duncan Gillis won silver for tossing the weight. His heart went out to Jim Thorpe when the officials took away his gold medals because long ago he had received $15.00 for playing minor league baseball.

John kept track of his friend Duncan, who had left the police force, founded an athletic club with the boxer Vic Foley, and become the all-round champion of British Columbia. John was not to know that Duncan was inducted into the BC Sports Hall of Fame in 1967.

Jack Gillis bore himself with stoic dignity and did not complain of his bad luck. He had made peace with himself. Gradually he went downhill. The time came when he asked his brother Peter Dan and his widowed sister Jessie Parker to come and bring him home. He settled in Jessie’s home and did what he could with the strength he had left. When his sister couldn’t open his bedroom window he got out of bed and raised it for her. His father built an elegant cabinet, which he placed in John’s bedroom, and there behind the glass doors were arrayed the dozens of his medals for him to see. Quietly and cheerfully the champion with the big emaciated frame faded and, after the last rite, his breath and his heart failed. Two weeks after his arrival in North Sydney he died at Jessie’s home, 4 July 1913 at the age of twenty-nine.