(LifeSiteNews) — The death on Monday morning of Canadian and international pro-life leader Jim Hughes deeply affected many of us who knew him well and worked with him for decades. His greatness lay in his incredible achievements with Campaign Life Coalition (CLC) and as Vice-President of International Right to Life while he was a truly humble, surprisingly shy, and very caring man.
Few people knew that he was uncomfortable being in the limelight and tended to give all the glory for whatever CLC managed to accomplish to others, above all to God.
Jim was a leader unlike many others I have met over the past 46 years. He had an incredible memory, was a gifted organizer and strategist and a commanding speaker. He managed to build strong, long-term loyalty among CLC volunteers and staff who valued his consensus-based leadership style and personal concern for them and their needs. CLC was never a top-down type of organization.
Jim was a delegator who much preferred to pass on important and high-visibility tasks to others and help them to grow into a larger pool of competent pro-life leaders.
I owned a large paint-and-wallpaper business in Toronto when I was first told about CLC and subscribed to its monthly newsletter. I soon became a CLC donor, then a volunteer when there were just a few volunteers, like Jim, and no paid staff. Noticing how deeply I was moved by the pro-life cause, Jim suggested that I give up my business and join CLC first part-time, then later full-time. We were both successful businessmen. CLC needed another person with that experience in order to thrive. I was inspired to say “Yes,” and the rest is history.
I was assigned a wide variety of CLC tasks, including developing and implementing most of the new technologies that dramatically improved our reach and influence. Jim was always searching for new ways of reaching the public with the pro-life message and changing minds and hearts. He heard about something called the internet and called me in to discuss setting up our own website without him knowing what that really meant.
Never before having touched a computer keyboard, I took on the task of developing the first office computer network, then later directed the creation of the websites for CLC, the interim and LifeSite, which became by far the most complex, but also most rewarding job of all.
This was incredibly stressful work at the time. The life-saving nature of our mission and Jim’s frequent encouragements kept me going through very late nights into the wee hours of the morning on what often seemed impossible to achieve in those days of primitive computer and internet technology.
Jim and I engaged in frequent back-and-forth phone calls at all hours of the day and evening during those years, whenever either or both of us were not in the office. His suggestions were frequently invaluable.
Both of us had prospered in our businesses and enjoyed that work, but the call to the pro-life cause was much stronger. For both of us, the gradual move from full-time, supposedly part-time volunteer hours with CLC, while still running our businesses, to full-time involvement on a very low salary, took a big leap of faith and trust in God.
Our respective supportive wives made that transition possible. We could never have done it without their support. Ginnie was the real hero behind Jim, and Bonnie was my rock.
We each ended up living on far less income for many years as our families grew, but it somehow all worked out in the end. Jim knew that we were under God’s protection and inspiration, as we most certainly were.
Because of Jim’s team management style, not trying to build a personal empire, but rather fully committed to changing the world for the better, several other organizations were founded through Campaign Life Coalition or had a big boost from Jim and CLC.
REAL Women of Canada was founded through CLC. I well recall Jim often encouraging the highly competent and well-connected CLC legal consultant, Gwen Landolt, to found a separate pro-life national women’s organization. Gwen was a powerhouse pro-life lawyer. It was great to have her on the CLC team, but Jim saw another role that Gwen could fill. Eventually, Gwen agreed to forge ahead, and CLC used its resources to help launch the successful REAL Women of Canada organization that still exists to this day.
The Canadian news media were dreadfully biased against the pro-life movement and failed to objectively cover major pro-life events, if at all. That was distressing for Jim. He engaged in media interviews in the office many times, only to learn that the journalist’s report was scrapped by editors or was heavily skewed against him and CLC. He decided to take the bull by the horns and start the first Canadian national pro-life newspaper, The Interim, in 1983.
Despite not having any experience in journalism or publishing, Jim started the newspaper and capably served as its first editor. He soon passed that baton to pro-life historian and Basilian priest Father Alphonse De Valk, and there followed several other editors in succession. Paul Tuns is the current editor.
Jim also convinced Fr. Alphonse de Valk that there was a need to start a Canadian pro-life Catholic magazine, Catholic Insight, which was run from the CLC office for many years.
Fr. De Valk insisted that there was a need for a provincial pro-life political party in Ontario. Thus, with the full blessing of Hughes and the substantial aid of CLC, the Family Coalition Party was formed and ran many candidates in provincial elections. It never succeeded in electing a candidate, but it was a handy vehicle allowing for tax-deductible donations and political forums to spread the pro-life message.
Lastly, in 1997, while John-Henry Westen and I were working under Jim on many tasks for CLC as full-time employees, the idea was conceived to take advantage of the new, up-and-coming internet to spread pro-life information and news. Thus, in April of that year, LifeSite, later known as LifeSiteNews, was founded by CLC. Jim Hughes was enthusiastic about developing the project because of his strong belief that the pro-life movement critically needed its own news service. The large CLC mailing list and the Interim newspaper were used to promote the project and got us off to a strong start.
For the first 12 years of LifeSite’s existence, CLC provided all the staffing and finances needed for its unique, critically-needed international news service for the world’s pro-life movement. It took a while, but LifeSiteNews eventually grew and became tremendously successful to the point that its financial needs were straining CLC’s core funding needs. Jim, an enthusiastic US reader, and later a founding US board member, Terry Kopp, all suggested LifeSite should separately incorporate in the US and Canada, which would allow it to continue to grow from the funds we were sure to raise from LifeSite’s many new readers, primarily from the US and Canada.
READ: The Jim Hughes I remember
Contrary to the false views of his critics, Jim rarely made important decisions without consulting others in and from outside the organization, from the lowest-level volunteers to the most senior paid staff. He would even consult with an envelope stuffer, if that was the only person in the office when he needed feedback. He often found that such humble workers possessed significant wisdom.
Jim gave high priority to this team-consultation approach involving many minds, which usually resulted in better, more enthusiastically accepted and implemented decisions. The decision on the Mulroney government’s infamous Bill C-43 was the most widely consulted in CLC history. It took weeks to come to a difficult, final decision, with Jim playing a coaching, but not final decision-making, role.
Over its many years of existence, CLC had a comparatively remarkably low staff and volunteer turnover, largely due to Jim’s management style, which appreciated everyone’s contributions. Many CLC volunteers and staff, therefore, stayed with the organization for years and some for decades. He was a highly respected leader because of this and other reasons.
Jim was always very reluctant to fire anyone, regardless of appeals from other staff enduring the incompetence or abrasive personalities of some of the eccentric characters in the office. Jim saw more in those individuals than we did and knew confidential details about them that he could not share with everyone else. He was exceptionally charitable, hoping and praying that the issues would eventually be resolved.
Jim never gave up on anyone and especially took to heart the reality of the post-aborted women who only he and maybe one or two others knew worked for us, and persons such as the former leading US abortionist Bernard Nathanson, who presided over 50,000 abortions and yet became pro-life largely through the prayers and friendship of pro-lifers who protested outside his abortuary.
Jim Hughes received a shocking number of condemnations from more extreme pro-lifers for working with Nathanson to save mothers and their babies from abortion. That hurt, but he learned to shrug off such misguided, unforgiving rants.
We were a close-knit team of “ordinary people doing great things for God,” as Mother Teresa told Jim when she was with him in our humble Ottawa lobby office. She also told him that we were “doing the most important work in the world.”
Under Jim, CLC was a precious second family for everyone in CLC. It held a large annual Christmas Party at St. Michael’s College School for many years, with Jim playing a believable Santa and, later, St. Nicholas, who every year gave generous gifts to the many children of the growing number of CLC families.
Every summer, Jim and his wonderful wife Ginny hosted a summer party for the CLC staff, friends, and some donors at their home in the Toronto Beaches area. Jim was always the chief barbecuer of the hamburgers, hot dogs and whatever else needed cooking at that annual party. That was one of Jim’s many quiet ways of serving all of us for the hard work that we put into the CLC mission year-round.
There were also several exceptionally entertaining singers and story-tellers in the campaign Life Coalition family. Father Ted Colleton (who also did amazing card tricks), the late Paul Morgan, Tom Lynch (now Fr. Tom Lynch) and Jim himself regaled us during meetings with a never-ending series of jokes and Irish and other songs. They were amazing. There were also pranksters who played late-night jokes on some of the others. That gave a wonderful, much-needed balance to our daily struggles against the growing anti-life forces.
Jim played a key role in ensuring that we had both fun and a strong spiritual balance to all that we did. His masterful speeches also incorporated the same. He was a commanding presence when he gave speeches, as he did once again during the LifeSiteNews gala in Toronto in August 2023. Take a look. It’s not long. You will enjoy Jim at his finest, for which he received a long round of applause from the appreciative audience.
Those are fond memories. Jim’s tremendous sense of humour and frequent mimicry lightened our days as we dealt with the heavy topics that we were called by God to address.
Jim was a leader who deeply cared for everyone he worked with, even if he did not always openly show that. And, as I said in my introduction to him before his speech above, he did many things for others that few, if any, were ever aware of. He was exceptionally discreet when that was required. Jim Hughes was a true servant of the needy and downtrodden.
He carried a heavy personal load of unjust accusations, misunderstandings, hateful comments and painful betrayals from some whom he trusted, considered to be friends or with whom he shared reasons for his hopes for the future or closely worked with for a number of years. He also carried a heavy burden of knowledge about the perverse, evil deeds of certain politicians, judges, police, bishops, and so on, that he could share with only very few of us.
Because of who he was and his prominence in Canada as a trustworthy, moral leader, people came to Jim and told him often very disturbing, validated information, and he was then responsible for attempting to find a way to bring about justice in these situations.
Many times, he could do nothing. Sometimes he succeeded, such as when he had two very corrupt bishops removed through a trusted relationship with another bishop and a very prominent, pro-life US cardinal. He also found out, from a friendly police investigator, who fire-bombed the Morgentaler abortuary. It was not, contrary to popular belief, a pro-life person, but this could not be made public because the information was related to a double-murder, family dispute case. At least Jim then knew that no pro-life activist was involved in the fire-bombing. These situations drained Jim, and it took the wisdom of Solomon to properly address them.
The only time I ever saw Jim in tears was when he learned over the phone that the Toronto’s Cardinal Emmet Carter had betrayed the pro-life movement by suddenly, without any consultation, dropping his firm demand for inclusion of the unborn in Pierre Trudeau’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms in exchange for Trudeau’s promise of full-funding for Catholic schools in Ontario. Trudeau also promised the Cardinal that nothing in the Charter could be used to remove protection for the unborn.
A huge national campaign undertaken by all Canadian pro-life organizations had compiled one million signatures on a petition demanding that the unborn specifically be protected under the Charter.
Jim warned the Cardinal not to trust the Marxist Prime Minister Trudeau. Later, the Charter was used, as Jim had warned, informed by the excellent legal advice of CLC’s Gwen Landolt, to advance abortion rights in Canada. The Cardinal profusely apologized to Jim for not realizing how he was manipulated by Trudeau. I have seen naïve bishops many times reject solid information from Jim, preferring to believe their untrustworthy staff. Being the leader of Canada’s national pro-life organization was often heartbreaking.
All of these things largely explained why Jim was sometimes difficult to work with, as well as his sometimes growly nature and bad temper that the public rarely saw. I came to marvel how Jim was able to handle so much that would crush the spirit of any good, principled person. Our human nature can only endure so much.
How do I know all of these things? It’s because I spent 46 years working closely with this man. He dramatically changed my life when he brought me into the pro-life movement and patiently guided me and many others to be more understanding and patient toward those considered our enemies. In many cases, they were instead sinners whom no one took the time to talk to, find out why they did what they did, or reach out with a prayerful, respectful helping hand. I am forever grateful for that guidance.
I can say, without any doubt, that Jim Hughes has similarly changed the lives of many thousands of souls for the better and that they have fond memories of this Canadian and international pro-life giant.
The three-part video interview I recorded with Jim in 2024 will give you a unique opportunity to experience the depth and breadth of who Jim Hughes was, and how and why he accomplished all that he did. I strongly urge everyone, especially Canadians, to set aside a few hours, or maybe an hour, or half-hour, per day, to watch the full, rich interview. (See embedded here.)
RELATED: Jim Hughes, longtime pro-life leader in Canada, dies
I arranged that interview both because I rightly feared that Jim would not be with us much longer and because his story had to be recorded to guide the current and upcoming generations of pro-life leaders and activists.
There is a lot to be learned from this interview with a truly great man who simply did his very best with what he had and who he was, and proved that a shy, ordinary person can do extraordinary things for God.
There is much more that can be written about Jim Hughes and the extraordinary team that he assembled around him, or shall I instead say, who were spiritually led to work with him, as I somehow was, and whose lives were wonderfully changed forever because of that relationship.
I will miss that great man for the rest of my days. I pray that those who quarrelled with Jim Hughes, heavily criticized some of his decisions, or foolishly claimed that he did this onerous work to enrich himself, will regret what they said and instead give thanks to God that Jim totally gave of himself to CLC for the love of God above all else.
And to everyone who knew and loved Jim, please pray for his soul because that is what he would wish. Also, pray for Jim’s wife Ginny and for their children and grandchildren, whom Jim dearly loved and who took care of him. The last year and a half have been difficult for them all because of Jim’s serious illnesses and eventual blindness, and then the stroke that eventually took him to the Lord.
I am very grateful to have known and been influenced by the great pro-life advocate Jim Hughes. I will dearly miss him.
I am sure the Lord will say to him, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”
