John Hugh Gillis (January 2, 1884 – July 4, 1913) was the first person to walk across Canada, and became Canadian all-round champion of track and field, now called the decathlon. A physical director of the Vancouver police, Gillis was famous as the "Western Giant". At Winnipeg 1909 he became Canadian all-round champion. He set a shot put record that stood for 34 years. He was just 42 points short in 7,000 of winning the North American all-round. A member of the 1912 Olympic team, he hoped to compete with Jim Thorpe but he had to read about it from a tuberculosis sanitorium. He died at North Sydney on July 4, 1913 at age 29. In May 2006, he was inducted into the British Columbia Sports Hall of Fame. History John Hugh Gillis was the son of cabinet maker Angus Hugh Gillis and his wife, Margaret Ann MacFarlane, who had moved from the Margaree Valley to North Sydney. After she died in 1904 Angus married again and moved to Glace Bay. John Hugh attended St. Francis Xavier College but dropped out after a year or two. Cross-continent walk On a bet and a dare, on January 31, 1906 at the age of 22 he set out from North Sydney, Nova Scotia, with two others to walk to San Francisco and back within a year. They hiked on the railroad track, crossed central Maine in cold and blizzard and reached Montreal, Quebec. There they disagreed. Gillis, suffering from sore feet, went on alone towards Vancouver, British Columbia. Charles Jackman, retired from the Toronto lacrosse team, decided at Montreal to follow him. Jackman caught up with him near Ignace, Ontario. The two tall athletes, both 6 feet 4½ inches, walked 1,800 miles (2,700 km) together with many adventures and strode into Vancouver station to a waiting crowd at midnight September 24, 1906. Documentation Jackman kept a little diary of the daily happenings and took 250 pictures. That diary, the pictures that survived, and the newspaper stories about the walk led to a book, Transcontinental Pedestrians, published in October 2006 by Fitzhenry & Whiteside, of Toronto. Track and field sports When they came back from Victoria, Charles and Jack shook hands as Charles took the train for Halifax and home. They would never see each other again. Jack Gillis decided to stay in Vancouver because there was great interest in track and field