Major General George Brock Chisholm, CC, CBE, MC*, ED

(Captain) – 15th Battalion, 48th Highlanders) 

(Extracts from the Canadian Encyclopedia Entry “Brock Chisholm”)

Brock Chisholm joined the 15th Battalion on 17 July 1915 and served in the trenches in France rising through the ranks. By  01 January 1917, when he was made a Lt, he had already been a cook, sniper, machine-gunner and scout. That August, he fought in the Battle for Hill 70 and earned the Military Cross for courage. His leadership of his platoon one year later in the Battle of Amiens earned him the addition of a bar. Since he’d been a child, Brock Chisholm had wanted to become a doctor. He enrolled in medicine at the University of Toronto in 1919 and graduated in 1924 setting up a practice in Oakville. In 1933, with his family he moved to London again, where Chisholm completed additional training in psychiatry.Brock practised as a psychiatrist in Toronto from 1934 to late 1939. During this time, he was also increasingly in demand as a public speaker. He lectured on a variety of topics, including mental health, fear and sexual education.

Brock Chisholm remained active in the Canadian military in the years after the First World War. He rose to senior ranks in the militia while pursuing his medical career. From 1928 to 1931 he commanded the Halton Rifles and from 1931 to 1932, the Lorne Rifles and on amalgamation became the Commanding Officer of the Lorne Scots.

Shortly after the Second World War broke out in September 1939, Chisholm was given command of military units in northern Ontario. He left his medical practice for this posting, which involved visiting prisoner of war (POW) camps, inspecting military units and organizing recruitment. In 1941, Chisholm became the army’s director of personnel selection. He developed a new system for evaluating recruits that weighted aspects of mental health on the same scale as physical health. Chisholm’s template for assessing recruits was called PULHEMS (Physique, Upper Limbs, Lower Limbs, Hearing, Eyesight, Mentality, Stability) – still used in military medical evaluations today. In 1942, Chisholm was promoted to director general of medical services for the Canadian Army. In November 1944, Brock Chisholm was appointed Deputy Minister of Health by Prime Minister Mackenzie King. Chisholm resigned  in July 1946, but and was appointed executive secretary of a commission that the United Nations had tasked with establishing the World Health Organization (WHO). In addition to coming up with the organization’s name, Chisholm contributed his definition of health to it

By 1967, the year Chisholm was appointed a Companion of the Order of Canada, he had suffered several strokes  from which he would not recover. He died in a veterans hospital in Victoria in 1971.

NOK: Father – Captain Frank Herbert Chisholm, Oakville, Ontario