Bernie Chisholm – 2025 Hall of Fame Inductee 

BERNIE CHISHOLM COACHES HIS WAY INTO THE HIGHLAND GAMES HALL OF FAME

Bernie Chisholm was one of hundreds of Antigonish kids who followed the urging of legendary coach Frank McGibbon to come down to Columbus Field to run, jump, throw and play. He remembers there being 75 to 100 kids there on Saturday mornings. Bernie had a fondness for distance running and was picked as a marathon runner for the 1967 Canada Games team.

Frank must have noticed something unique about Bernie’s potential. One day he told the teenager to take the other distance runners and have them run around the Landing. This became a regular expectation for Bernie and was the start of a lifetime of coaching.

Dr. John Hugh Gillis, superintendent of Antigonish Regional, had a standard interview question for teachers applying for jobs at his high school. It went something like, “What can you see yourself doing in terms of extra-curricular work?” Bernie Chisholm had a ready answer for that question. While Bernie was in his third year at St. F.X., Dr. Gillis had recruited him to train the school’s cross-country and track and field teams.

From the beginning Bernie was blessed with tremendous athletes who came out for the cross-country. He’d prepare them to run in high school meets through the winter and spring, then train them and other area runners for the Highland Games – the last, the biggest and the most watched track and field meet on the team’s calendar, some years attracting more than 600 top athletes. The track, groomed to perfection by Frank, was reputed to be the fastest in Eastern Canada and a place where personal bests could be recorded and records could be broken. The Antigonish Highland Society team, with Frank as head coach and Bernie as assistant, could hold their own with teams from all over the Atlantic region and as far away as Quebec and Ontario.

Bernie not only coached at the local junior and senior high schools, winning more than 50 provincial titles, but was volunteer cross-country coach at StFX from 1987 until he retired in 2018. During that time he amassed seventeen Atlantic University (AUS) championships – nine men’s, eight women’s. His StFX women’s team nabbed a bronze at the Canadian championships in 2007. His men’s team won a silver in 2008 and returned to capture a bronze the next year, all impressive feats for a school of barely 4000 students.

Bernie was also called on to coach regional, provincial and Canada Games teams and served as assistant coach for Canadian teams competing at the international level.

Several of the athletes Bernie coached have represented Canada in international competitions, including Highland Games Hall of Famers Robyn Meagher and Dr. Jeannie Cameron, and Kim Bird, from Amherst, who also competed for the Highland Society track team. Robyn was selected for the Canadian team for two Olympic Games. Antigonish’s

own Eric Gillis, who was coached by Bernie in high school and university represented Canada at three Olympics Games and recorded a top ten finish at the Rio Olympics in 2016.

In 2004 Coach Chisholm was selected for induction into the Nova Scotia Sport Hall of Fame. In his letter of support, Eric Gillis, still four years away from his first Olympics, wrote:

“To describe the kind of person that Coach is, I would have to say that he is a man who gives with no expectations of return. For as long as I’ve known him, Coach has been giving up his time, knowledge and whatever resources he may have at his disposal to those under his tutelage. What does he ask in return? Nothing but the best effort you can muster on any given day… His fix is on seeing the slow gradual improvements that accompany a committed runner irrelevant of initial ability…

Coach is a many of many quotes, and the one that I think suits him best is: ‘The will to win comes from within.’ I believe this is because Coach believes that an individual ultimately has control over his/her life and he allows one the personal freedom while still remaining a source of knowledge and guidance.”

The Antigonish Highland Society will be inducting Coach Chisholm into its Highland Games Hall of Fame on July 10th, along with his wife Brenda. They are the first ever married couple to be inducted. Brenda, who will be subject of a future post, has assisted Bernie through his coaching career, but it on the strength of her Highland Dancing career that she will enter the Hall of Fame.