I remember it well. It was a sunny day, thirty-eight years ago today, and much hotter than usual for late September. I was sweltering in my red wool sweater and pleated plaid skirt, and standing with my siblings and a few others in Peterborough’s Little Lake cemetery where my father, Jim Higgins, was to be buried beside our mother. There was one person I didn’t know—a young woman—and it’s only in recent years that I’ve come to know who she was and why she was there.

Jim Higgins, born July 26, 1907, had died September 18, 1982 after a lengthy stay in hospital, virtually paralyzed by strokes. His brain worked and he could move his eyes. That was it.

One of the last times I visited, he was trying to tell me something with his eyes. It took me awhile to figure out that he wanted me to open the drawer in his bedside table, take out cards sent by his friends, and read their messages to him. It was a poignant moment.

As for his funeral, my father had made it clear that he didn’t want a church service; that he wanted a small graveside gathering. I knew he had not attended George Street United Church with our mother. Now that I’ve spent three and half years preparing his book for publication, I know why: Although he didn’t say it in so many words, his beef was with organized religion.

Despite that, it turns out he’d read the Bible from cover to cover. When they were courting, my mother was surprised to learn he knew so much about it: he says that was a big reason she decided to marry him.

They even voted for different political parties, but my university educated mother, Reta Palliser, clearly recognized something very special in Jim Higgins. We siblings are now just discovering the depth of that character; that he wasn’t the ordinary man we thought he was.

My sister, Susan, found a poem in his effects when he died and it was read at his funeral. He had paraphrased the famous Ralph Waldo Emerson poem, Success. At the time it meant something, but it means so much more now.

Success in Life

To appreciate beauty.

To find the best in others—a tough one.

To have accomplished a task: bringing up a family, planting a garden, or trying to improve a social condition.

To earn the honest respect of your critics and to understand false friends—another tough one.

To have the respect of persons who have some intelligence.

To have the affection of my children.

To love sincerely and find time to laugh.

To know that even one person has breathed easier because I have lived.

            Jimmie Higgins

And that young woman at his funeral? Her name was Elaine Farley, one of several Trent University history students who befriended my Dad when news broke in 1978, and again in 1980, about him being the anonymous Canadian soldier, who had saved a young boy named Manuel Alvarez during the Spanish Civil War.

Though he didn’t tell me much about his student friends, I’ve learned that their interest in his story meant a lot to him; that he told them things he never told us, and that Elaine Farley was a special person in his life.

Then, when I reviewed his calendars, where he kept track of his daily activities, I could see that she was the one who typed most of his hand-written stories and, beyond that, cared for him by helping around his apartment and talking to him openly about his past, which he never did with us, his children.

When I learned this, I searched for Elaine, and recently sent her a copy of Fighting for Democracy to thank her. It is fitting that, on this anniversary of his funeral, Elaine wrote, thanking me for sending her the book, saying “…the family photo brought back memories of conversations as Jimmie was so proud of the photo and his family…an amazing man who inspired me…I was a union rep for many years and have chaired two food banks…”

Now, in September 2020, as I launch his book, which he wrote partly in 1939 and partly in 1977, I do it as the proud daughter of an “amazing man” who, I’m convinced, will now inspire so many more to take on worthy causes and “do the right thing.”

© Janette Higgins

Fighting for Democracy: The True Story of Jim Higgins (1907-1982), A Canadian Activist in Spain’s Civil War can be ordered here.

Fighting for Democracy by Jim Higgins is the latest book about the Mac-Paps (Canadians in the Mackenzie Papineau Battalion) which was part of the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War. Other books about Canadians in the Spanish Civil War include Not For King or Country by Tyler Wentzell , Mac-Pap by Ronald Liversedge with David Yorke and Renegades by Michael Petrou.