Jack Taunton: How a love for running led to a pioneering career in sports medicine
Everyone reading this newsletter will probably recognize the name Dr. Jack Taunton. If you have spent time in Vancouver during the last forty years, chances are you will have come across Dr. Taunton, if you have had any involvement in track & field. Or sports medicine. Or just about any sport in general.
His résumé speaks for itself: Co-founder of the Allan McGavin Sports Medicine Centre; co-founder of SportsMedBC; co-founder of the Vancouver Sun Run and the Vancouver Marathon; Chief Medical Officer for the 2010 Vancouver Olympics – the list goes on. Indeed, as I prepare to interview Dr. Taunton for our newsletter article, I begin to feel overwhelmed by the prospect of the whole thing. What should I ask about? Where do I even begin?
I mull over these thoughts at the Mahony & Sons bar, sipping on coffee and anxiously scrambling through my notes, when I feel a tap on my shoulder. I turn in my seat to see Dr. Taunton, standing with two poles in his left hand, and a grin from ear to ear.
“Jack,” he says, extending his right hand. “You must be Evan.”
We amble over to a table, Dr. Taunton still fit and sprightly on his walking poles. As we chat away, Dr. Taunton’s warm demeanour puts me at ease, and the talk turns to the article. As an opening question, I ask: “What drove you to pursue a career in sports medicine?” Dr. Taunton pauses, then launches into his response.
Dr. Taunton studied kinesiology at Simon Fraser University, graduating with a bachelor’s degree in 1969 and a master’s degree in 1971. A keen sportsman, he played football and soccer; but his passion was distance running. Desperate to compete in road races, but without any local outlet to do so, he decided to start Vancouver’s first running club – the Lions Gate Road Runners – and put on races himself. This timing proved fortuitous, as it coincided with the 1970s running boom and the sport’s skyrocketing popularity. In 1972, Taunton and 45 other runners ran five loops of Stanley Park as the inaugural Lions Gate Road Runners International Marathon; this event rapidly expanded in the coming years, and is now the BMO Vancouver Marathon. Combining his kinesiology background and ever-growing love for running, Taunton teamed up with his coach, Dr. Doug Clement, to study running injuries and develop a series of lectures on the topic.
This pattern of Taunton’s fervour for running driving his professional career would continue throughout his life. Seeking to expand upon their small injury prevention and rehabilitation practice, Taunton applied to UBC Medical School, with the intention of becoming a sports medicine doctor alongside Clement. The only issue was that sports medicine wasn’t yet a field in Canada.
“We felt that we had a responsibility to create what didn’t exist,” Taunton explains. “So I tailed the orthopedic surgeons every shift I could, and told them that I was going to start a sports medicine practice and that they were going to join me. They thought I was mad.”
Mad or not, he was good to his word. Upon graduation from medical school, Taunton and Clement went into practice together, and were shortly thereafter asked to take over as doctors for the UBC Thunderbirds and start UBC’s Division of Sports Medicine. What started as a motley operation in a trailer was soon moved to the John Owen Pavilion, and the father of a rugby player they treated then helped them to raise funds for upgraded facilities. The father was called Allan McGavin, and the sports medicine centre bears his name to this day. It would serve as their home for over thirty years of pioneering and eminent work in their field.
Throughout all of this, Taunton stayed dedicated to his own running. Despite the bustle of medical school, he managed to keep up a gruelling training regimen: “At that time, I lived with my wife in Steveston,” Taunton recounts. “It was 15 miles from St Paul’s Hospital to our house, but I ran it every day – usually at 3am or 4am.”
Dr. Taunton is about to go on, when he pauses, and says: “Sorry, you don’t need to know all this. I’m rambling.” Maybe he is; but I’m enthralled, and I urge him to continue. Dr. Taunton smiles, and digs deeper into his tale.
Eager to visit the birthplace of jogging, Taunton and a crew of friends flew to New Zealand to compete in the local road relays. To fund their six week tour of the country, Taunton would deliver lectures on sporting injuries and footwear in every town they went to. While there, they discovered the “Round the Bays”, a running race promoted by the Auckland Star which attracted an unprecedented 16,000 joggers every year. Ever the innovator, Taunton believed they could use the same model to create a similar race in Vancouver, and approached the Vancouver Sun with his idea.
As it so often did, Taunton’s timing proved serendipitous. The Vancouver Sun was in the market for a new event to promote, after its previously-sponsored competition – an annual fishing derby – had to be ceased due to declining salmon populations. Taunton, along with Doug Clement, Diane Clement, and Ken Elmer, used their influence and connections to attract both elite international athletes and droves of local runners alike. The Vancouver Sun Run was an instant success, and is today one of the largest road races in the world.
Taunton possesses stories like these in spades. In 1981, he helped pace Allison Roe to the women’s world record in the marathon. In 1984, to take her mind off the race, he went with Lynn Kanuka to get a haircut on the morning of her bronze-medal-winning Olympic final. And as appreciation grew for the necessity of sports medicine, so too did Taunton’s involvement in international competitions. In addition to his work for the UBC Thunderbirds, Taunton served as a doctor at three World University Championships, six Pan-American Games, and eight Olympic Games; including serving as the Chief Medical Officer for the Canadian team at the 2000 Sydney Olympics.
“I never made it to the Olympics as an athlete,” Taunton tells me. “But as a doctor, I managed to backdoor my way in several times.”
For his career’s magnum opus, Dr. Taunton was appointed the Chief Medical Officer for the 2010 Vancouver Olympics. With the terrific honour came a terrific amount of toil. Taunton had to account for public health, disaster planning, and sponsorship deals, as well as create the world’s first Mobile Medical Unit – a rig-mounted hospital, replete with sleeping quarters, trauma beds, and operating rooms.
“Leading up to and during the Games, I had to be live for a hundred days,” Taunton recalls. “And during those hundred days, I was home for a total of nine hours.” The first thing he said to his wife Cheryl after it ended? “Let’s go to Mahony’s,” Taunton laughs.
Since 2010, Dr. Taunton has taken a step back, but remained busy. In addition to spending time with his wife, two daughters, and three grandchildren, he has helped to organize the PoCo Grand Prix; served as Chief Medical Officer at the Americas Masters Games; and, in 2014, was inducted into the BC Sports Hall of Fame in the builder category. It was the culmination of decades of distinguished work as a doctor, professor, and leader in the sports community. Humble of his achievements, Dr. Taunton says of his induction: “It was a tremendous honour for the sports medicine community and for my team. Everything I did, I did as part of a team. It was an honour to carry the flag for them.”
By now, Dr. Taunton and I have been sitting in Mahony & Sons for over two hours. At this point, I have gotten far more than I ever hoped for – not just a story for an article, but an appreciation for a man with a life fully lived in pursuit of his dreams. As a final question, I ask him what he is up to these days.
Gesturing to his poles and his back, he explains that he has had several spine fractures and seven surgeries in recent years; the eventual result of a congenital spine defect. Held in a body brace and fused from the shoulders down to the pelvis, Taunton’s mobility is limited to walking. At least for now.
“When I was young, I suffered from polio and survived a severe car accident. They said I would never be able to run, and I went on to do 63 marathons. So,” Taunton shares with me, a twinkle in his eyes: “My goal is to run again.”
After everything he has accomplished, I would not bet against Jack Taunton.
