Chief John Chisholm

Chief John Chisholm was uncompromising in his pride to serve as a police officer.

A veteran of World War I, serving in Iraq, then called Mesopotamia, he emigrated from Dundee, Scotland just as his sister and two brothers left home to live abroad. He first worked in the Don Valley Brickworks before joining the Toronto Police Department on October 16, 1920.

He rose the ranks quickly, becoming a detective in three years and rising the ranks of investigative positions until he was promoted to Chief Constable in 1946.

Toronto was not the sprawling city we know now in the 1930s as Chisholm raised his family. The skyline dominated by the Royal York hotel and the 34-storey CIBC Tower on King St.  He and his wife Vera (a Bell telephone operator), raised his three boys near High Park, travelling to the family cottage at Port Union in Scarborough, and over to Etobicoke from time to time to shoot gophers in farmer’s fields.

He took his work seriously, often heading back in after having supper with his family.  He practiced any public addresses at the dining room table before delivering them. He also famously never let down his guard, getting his sons or fellow officers to drive him into work. He was even known to carry a covered basket with his revolver, handcuffs and a billy club while gardening.

The Chief insisted his sons pursue the post-secondary education that he never received himself. Ken, Bill and Alan all obliged with engineering degrees from the University of Toronto applying them to armed services, city engineering and pulp and paper industries over the course of their careers.

Ken’s son, John, became an RCMP officer.

It was the amalgamation of the 13 Toronto police services in 1957 that caused untold stress on Chief Chisholm, navigating the politics of the time and untold other stresses from a career of police work.

He died by suicide because of the line of duty on July 4, 1958.

After his death, it was learned that his doctor had given him advice to take time off work to address his mental health.

It was thought that he would be too proud to do that, perhaps believing it to be a defeat.

The Toronto Daily Star quoted Reverend M. R. Sanderson at his Chisholm’s funeral attended by hundreds of police officers from Toronto and police services across the country.

“The chief lived sacrificially,” he said. “Only a few of many thousands who knew and esteemed him will ever know of the vast outpouring of his bodily and mental energies across the years. Now we know the tremendous toll – and think in silence of one who gave so much for so many.

“He carried the integrity of his personality into all phases of police work. Truly, it can be said of Chief Chisholm that if every person for whom he had performed some deed of decency or of kindness could bring a blossom to his grave he would sleep tonight beneath a multitude of flowers.”