On May 18th, Canadian pro-lifers lost a champion whose legacy is difficult to overstate. Jim Hughes was more than a leader, a founder, and an activist: he was, for decades, the face of the pro-life movement in Canada. When the media wanted to know the reaction to an event affecting the unborn, they did not call the Catholic Chancery, they called Jim Hughes.
Hughes was the leader of the national political arm of the pro-life movement, Campaign Life Coalition, for decades. The list of all of the organizations which he either founded, led, or helped to midwife during his time at CLC is staggering: in addition to REAL Women, the Family Coalition Party, Tories for Life, and Liberals for Life, Hughes also helped to bring 40 Days for Life and LifeChain to Canada. He was, as well, a founding board member of LifeSiteNews, and was the founding editor of this newspaper, The Interim.
What impelled Hughes to leave a comfortable life and commit himself to full-time pro-life activism was a visceral reaction that we all know quite well: horror at the sheer reality of abortion. But, while this response spurs most of us to donate some of our resources, volunteer some of our time, and keep the pro-life intention in our prayers, it became, for Hughes, the kind of call that features in the Gospel—a call to leave all behind and focus only on God’s work. And that is exactly what Hughes did for more than 40 years, dedicating himself to the tireless defense of the weakest and most vulnerable members of Canadian society.
Other humanitarians who have been similarly selfless in their service have received the Order of Canada. Hughes, of course, enjoyed no such accolades from the wider world. But pro-life activists did recognize, in Hughes, a leader who was courageous but not overbearing; who was visible but remained, at the same time, self-effacing; who was genuine, humble, affable, and plain-spoken. Moreover, Hughes, like everyone who is called to the pro-life movement, recognized it was work entrusted to him: it was a tremendous privilege to defend unborn children, one which no prize or recompense could ever equal.
The sheer generosity of Hughes’ devoted life of activism brings to mind a prayer attributed to St Ignatius Loyola, 16th-century founder of the Society of Jesus, which petitions the divine for the grace of being able to “give, and not to count the cost; to fight, and not to heed the wounds; to toil, and not to seek for rest; to labor, and not to ask for any reward.” The kind of self-forgetful giving, fighting, toiling, and laboring was precisely what Hughes embodied.
Work in the pro-life movement did not allow for any cost-counting or wound-licking, nor did it offer much by way of rest or reward. Hughes led the movement during an era that featured more setbacks than successes, and which was, even for many full-time activists, the cause of burn-out, disillusion, and despair. However, the very fact that victories were few and far between made the mission and the calling more heroic.
Indeed, nothing was more characteristic about Hughes—or “Jim” as he was known to a great many of us in the movement—than his goodness. He was, of course, a fixture at innumerable Marches for Life, where he could be seen beaming a warm smile, radiating bonhomie, and happily witnessing to the good work of the pro-life cause. But Jim’s private life was replete with what the poet calls “little, nameless, unremembered, acts/ Of kindness and of love.” Jim would pay countless calls to the sick and ailing, arrange to have poinsettias sent to lonely widows facing their first Christmas alone, would place a cheerful phone call to a mournful acquaintance and would attended, at great hardship, countless funerals of friends and supporters.
Jim Hughes, therefore, was both a great Canadian and a good Christian, a devout Catholic hero and a loyal friend, a leader and a fellow-traveller who will be missed by all who knew him. If he now enjoys that rest which he renounced in life in order to serve the unborn, we who are left behind may be tempted towards selfishness and sorrow as we contemplate the prospect of working in the movement without him happily in our ranks. But it was precisely in such moments that Jim himself would cajole us into attending yet another LifeChain, making yet another phone call, and giving even more generously to a cause which he always recognized as the work of God. His very example, then, cheers us on as we mourn his loss and rededicate ourselves to the pro-life movement which forever bears his imprint.
Jim Hughes, Requiescat in Pace!
