Dedicated doctor Cathy Campbell honoured
by EVELYN C. WHITE
Published October 31, 2014
Her mother perished in a plane crash. Her father battled mental illness and alcohol abuse. Stymied in her preferred career of track coach, she instead became a physician. The life of Halifax-born Dr. Catherine Jean (CJ) Campbell has been fraught with loss and adversity. But she transformed her sorrows into a dedication to others that has ushered her to the Nova Scotia Sport Hall of Fame.
Campbell’s niece, Missy Franklin, a marquee swimmer who boasts four Olympic gold medals, is bursting with pride.
“Auntie CJ is an incredible role model,” says Franklin, the daughter of Campbell’s older sister and only sibling, Dr. Dorothy Ann (DA) Franklin. “She and my mom grew up in a dysfunctional family but didn’t allow that to hold them back. My aunt deserves every bit of recognition that comes her way.”
Celebrated as a builder in sports medicine, soccer and track and field, Campbell will join six other notable figures and the 1998 Truro Bearcats hockey team as 2014 Hall of Fame inductees. The ceremony will be held today at the World Trade and Convention Centre in Halifax.
“As a native Nova Scotian, I’m deeply humbled to be inducted with such a distinguished group,” says Campbell, a preventive health and sports medicine doctor at the Cleveland Clinic in Toronto who is also general medical officer and doping control officer for the FIFA 2014 under-20 Women’s World Cup and 2015 senior Women’s World Cup. “So many people helped me along the way.”
She says that as a youth, she couldn’t picture herself travelling the world to treat elite athletes. Her mother, Eleanor, dismayed by marital woes, left the family when the girls were ages two and six. They never saw her again.
The girls were shuttled between their impaired father, John, and other relatives. One morning Campbell, 12, found on the kitchen table a newspaper clipping that detailed the death of their mother (then in her late 30s) when a small plane crashed into Stillwater Lake outside Halifax.
“The incident was never discussed,” she says a half-century later, her voice choked with tears. “Apparently my mother was a telephone operator out there. I understand that the pilot was a doctor who’d taken her up as a thank you for assisting with his calls. He survived the wreck and she drowned.”
Effectively on their own as adolescents, Campbell and her sister lived in a series of Halifax boarding houses. While DA earned degrees, first at Dalhousie and later at McMaster University’s medical school, Campbell found refuge in provincial track meets.
“I just ran and ran until I couldn’t run anymore,” says the 1971 graduate of Queen Elizabeth High School, who would also attend Dal. “Track gave me confidence and the attention I craved as a lonely and rootless child.”
Comforted by the camaraderie of sports, Campbell, then a 19-year-old Dal student, volunteered with the Atlantic Coast Track and Field Club. She was pivotal in the ascent of celebrated Halifax hurdler Cecilia Branch.
“I was in Grade 9 when Cathy came up and told me that I had talent and she thought I could benefit from coaching,” says Branch. “I was already beating everybody at every distance and so cocky that I didn’t think I needed to train.
“Then I lost a race, so I called Cathy,” she adds, laughing. “She brought in weight training, nutrition, mental preparation, stuff that was completely new to us in Nova Scotia. Coach Campbell helped me get a full track scholarship to the University of Las Vegas in Nevada. She put me on the map. I owe her my life.”
Campbell also coached Krisanne Crowell, today an acclaimed Halifax jazz musician.
“We had homemade uniforms, old shoes, and were totally ragtag compared to other track teams,” says Crowell, a former champion sprinter. “But instead of hanging out at the mall smoking, we’d train six days a week with Cathy because of her care, commitment and knowledge. She had a tremendous impact on the girls she mentored. And all the while, she was a student herself.”
Inspired by the success of her charges and armed with Dal degrees in physical education and exercise physiology, Campbell later applied, to no avail, for paid track coach positions.
“Back then, there weren’t any jobs for women unless they’d won gold medals at the Olympics,”
she says. “Interestingly, male track coaches didn’t have to meet that mark.”
By the 1980s, DA was a doctor, married (to Ontario native Dick Franklin) and the mother of a future Olympic swimming sensation. She encouraged her baby sister to attend medical school.
“DA just kept after me to apply to McMaster,” Campbell says. “I was never even interviewed for a track coach position, so I figured I had nothing to lose.”
She completed her medical training in 1986 and worked several years in family practice and sports medicine in the United States. In 2000, a Dal classmate who’d followed her career asked her to assist, as a physician, the Canadian national women’s soccer team. The roster included a young striker named Christine Sinclair.
“I’d never followed soccer, but I read books, studied, watched film, just totally immersed myself in every aspect of the game,” says Campbell. “I’ve always had a tendency to overdo it and I guess that served me well.”
She was later officially appointed team physician. The decade-long position took her to numerous countries, including New Zealand, Costa Rica, Denmark and Singapore (to name a few). Emily Zurrer profited from Campbell’s expertise when she was seriously injured during a 2004 game in Thailand.
“I was knocked to the ground with my forehead split wide open,” Zurrer recalls. “I was covered in blood and the Thai officials wanted to rush me to hospital. But Doc refused. Instead, she placed me on the floor of the locker-room and calmly stitched me up. She did such an amazing job that the scar is barely visible. ”
And with her medical bag at the ready, Campbell was on the sidelines at the 2012 Olympic Games in London when the Canadian women’s team bested France for the bronze medal. In a gesture that signals the distance she has travelled since her “ragtag” track coach years, Sinclair gifted the cherished team physician with an autographed pair of her shoes.
In addition to her “day job” in Toronto, Campbell continues to travel (Azerbaijan one month, Chile the next) in her duties for FIFA. The first North American woman to hold the position of general medical officer for the Women’s World Cup, she’ll clock countless hours when Canada hosts the senior women’s competition next year.
“Most people think that CJ’s job is so glamorous,” says Roz Walls, a longtime friend. “But she’s like a pack horse with all the medical equipment she hauls around the world for Canadian athletes. It’s a miracle she hasn’t collapsed.”
Campbell escapes from the demands of her unintended profession at her cosy cottage in Pictou. There, she reads mystery novels and makes killer batches of chow (“a Nova Scotia competitive sport,” she quips).
But most of all, the once lonesome child revels in the company of friends and family.
“Some of the best memories in my life have been visiting Auntie CJ in Pictou and eating lobster on the beach,” says Missy Franklin. “She is someone I can count on all the time, no matter what. She has been like a second mom to me.”