Breakfasts With My Brother

I never had a brother until Jim Aldham started calling me brother a lifetime ago.

Landing In Dorval

Our little family moved from Essex, Ontario to Pointe Claire, QC in March 1983. We were total strangers in a community and province where we took on responsibilities as the assistant pastor at Lakeshore Evangelical Church, Dorval. Around the same time, Jim Aldam started to attend LEC after serving at Trinity Church in Lasalle as their organist.

It wasn’t too long until he expressed interest in working alongside us in youth ministry. Jim carved out time from his executive role with Air Canada and became more than a volunteer. He began calling me brother. “My brother, Bob.” He intended far more than the Christian appellation of “brother.” Both of us had sisters but no brothers.

Jim chose me as a brother.

Friends And Brothers

True friends are gifts from God. Proverbs says that a friend sticks closer than a brother, but Jim became a brother closer than a friend to me and our family. He was supportive any way he could be.

In 1988 I took a youth team on missions trip to Kenya and Uganda, Jim drove Jocelyn and our boys to be with my parents near Toronto and then hopped a plane back to Montreal. To this day, our boys call him uncle.

Typical of Jim’s good nature was a Sunday night service at LEC. For a forgotten reason, Jocelyn was not in attendance and I was preaching. Ever the good guy, Jim sat with Cory and Jean Marc during the service. Jean Marc was about four years old and Cory was six. As I was preaching, I noticed the three of them over to my left, in a pew near the front. Jean Marc was standing on the pew beside Jim. He was rubbing Jim’s bald spot. Jim never flinched; just smiled. It was all I could do not to lose it.

Life Centre Youth

So much of the good that was accomplished in the youth ministry at Lakeshore Evangelical Church was because of Jim. We called the ministry, Life Centre, as a place of refuge for youth on the West Island. Anybody reading this post who was a part of the Life Centre would know parts of the story because Jim was at every event, but so much of what he did was behind the scenes. If I start to list all he did, I know I’ll miss a good portion.

He was a heromaker long before the Heromaker book was written. He propelled others forward and supported them in their ministry.

Jim prayed, he loved, he gave, and he often went the 2^nd and 3^rd mile.

In ’86 we decided to move youth ministry out of the church and into the community. The idea was to go to youth rather than having them come to us. Every Friday morning, Jim and I met for breakfast at Harvey’s or A&W to talk leadership and review details of the youth gathering that night. In the afternoon, Jim rented a van, loaded up the sound equipment and band instruments at the church and drove to the Dollard des Ormeaux community centre. Then we off loaded the van, hosted a youth meeting, packed up the van which Jim returned after off-loading the equipment at the church. He did that every Friday for over three years and paid for all the expenses himself.

One On One

Jim and I drove our team down the east coast of the US in the One On One youth choir tour in June 1990. It was an audacious trip just like the Rock Solid radio program we started up in 1987. We had no business doing a radio program or a choir tour. However, churches took a risk on us and we got the experience of our lifetimes. No one knew this would be our last function together. A month later I resigned to start a new role in Edmonton. The team took a break during the tour to go to the beach at Nags Head in North Carolina.

Jim’s not in the photo as always because he was the one taking the picture. He took all the pictures. He paid to have some of them mounted and we displayed the picture from Nags Head in our home for the last 36 years.

Show Up

I missed the University graduation of one of our youth. Jim showed up. He always showed up. He later chided me about my absence. There are right places to be at the right time and often the only time. Like a graduation. Those moments are as important or more for a pastor as any moment in church. Lesson learned.

Our family farewelled Montreal in July. Jim helped organize a party in a park for the youth of the West Island to say au revoir. Sleep didn’t come easy later that night. We sincerely grieved, leaving people we loved like family, and a brother. His last words to me were a repeat of what he said so often: “Love ya, man.”

Over the next two decades, whenever we could get back to la belle province, we always had breakfast with Jim.

Jim’s Era

Talk to anyone who was a teen in that era, and they’ll have a memory of Jim. Dana-Lyn Bamatter’s comment sums up the sentiment: “He truly was a one-of-a-kind man. Big heart that cared for others and showed the love of Jesus.”

Gord Bagshaw, who drummed on the One On One tour, now lives in Brazil with his wife. He wrote, “He was a mentor in ways I am sure he didn’t realize. I know I watched and learned from him. When I entered youth ministry one of the things I asked the Lord for was a Jim. He was the model I had in my mind of someone who came along side you, doing the work.”

During COVID, Jim became an online master in his 70s. We connected frequently about him championing his church’s online services, and working every day to keep the congregation together while they were apart. Jim founded and poured himself into administering a local Facebook group, “What’s Happening Brantford.” He guarded its tone and character as a forum for kindness. Within days of his passing, 629 people commented on a memorial post with over 2,200 reactions on that FB page.

Jesus and Jim

Today, his only wish would be for you to know Jesus. Not just about him, but to know him as Saviour. Jim is in the presence in Jesus in heaven. He believed that death was not a period at the end of life’s sentence. He knew death was a comma, punctuating life to an eternal level. All he lived by faith he now sees by sight. All the health struggles he endured in his latter years are over.

He was a good brother.

This is not a goodbye; this is good night.

See you in the morning. We’ll have breakfast.

Did you know Jim?  Please join the conversation and post a memory or a reflection below. Thank you.

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