Canadian National Singles And Doubles Champion Jay Gillespie, 1955-2016 by Rob Dinerman photo Ontario Squash Hall of Fame
Dateline February 7th ---
DSR is sad to report that Jay Gillespie, 60, died Saturday afternoon
after a long battle with pancreatic cancer. A Canadian intercollegiate
individual and team champion at the University of Toronto during the
late-1970’s, Gillespie also won the Canadian Nationals in 1981 and a
pair each of Canadian National Doubles (in 1982 with Dave Hetherington
and 1987 with Victor Harding) and U. S. National Doubles (with Harding
in 1983 and Peter Martin in 1985). In addition to these exploits in
national Open competition, he captured a total of 16 Canadian, 2 US and
3 World age-group men’s and mixed doubles titles as well as three
Ontario Open singles and 21 Ontario doubles championships, eight of
them at the Open level, the last of which, with Scott Dulmage in 2004,
occurred when Gillespie was 49 years old.
Affectionately
known as Jungle Jay, Gillespie was a fixture in Ontario and in national
and regional play for nearly four decades. Remarkably, he stayed
connected to squash and kept competing nearly to the very end, even
while undergoing medical treatments. Indeed, as recently as this past
spring, he reached the final on sequential early-April weekends of the
Canadian Mixed 55’s with Joyce Davenport and the Canadian Men’s 55’s
with Namsoo Oh. On the eve of that latter event, he was inducted into
the Ontario Squash Hall of Fame, having previously been selected for
the University of Toronto Sports Hall of Fame in 1997 and the Cricket
Club Squash Wall of Fame in 2013.
Jay is survived by his wife, Lili, and their two children, Sean and Jackie.
