An empty chair at the dinner table

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 23/12/2022 (733 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Nostalgia was already driving the bus for this column even before I learned that Jim Carr had died.

Forty years ago, I wrote the Christmas Eve editorial for the Winnipeg Sun, in what would be its last year as an independent newspaper.

Looking for a theme, I wondered what was on my mind back in 1982. The editorial began:

“On Christmas Eve in the Ukraine, it is an old custom to set an extra place at the table for the traditional 12-dish meal. If there is a stranger from another town, or someone without a family, that person is invited for dinner, because no one is supposed to eat alone on the Holy Night.

“It is a beautiful custom, because Christmas is for children and for families, and those who have neither feel the absence most at this time of year. Christmas can be a lonely and painful experience … (but) if tomorrow we could set an extra place for the lonely, the bereaved, the hungry, it would be a merrier time for all of us.”

Before he had a family of his own, Jim Carr often spent Christmas Day with mine. Every year since 1970, we had been joined by a rotating cohort of Jewish friends and colleagues for Christmas dinner in the big dining room at Twin Oaks. There was always an empty chair for whomever was in town, and could drive out for turkey and plum pudding.

Jim and my father, Tom Denton, had worked together through the Winnipeg Symphony rescue and the fledgling Arts Council. So, when the Winnipeg Sun was launched in November 1980, dad needed the help, and Jim became part of the crew that founded a new newspaper in the teeth of a global recession.

Tributes to Jim remarked on how he joined the editorial team at the Winnipeg Free Press in 1992 — but first he was the main editorial voice in the struggling (but independent) Winnipeg Sun. He demurred about writing the Christmas editorials, however, and suggested I write them instead.

It was the kind of thing he would do. He had become a periodic older brother to me, as we debated world events and many other things at Christmas dinner and throughout the year, before I left town for my graduate education.

We tend to narrate the story of our lives in chapters, each with its own setting and separate cast of characters. But in truth our lives are full of threads, woven through many scenes, and holding the pattern together in whatever chapter we happen to be working on at the moment.

Those years at the Sun were a crucible for everyone involved — a mixture of passion, self-sacrifice, ideals, hard work and desperation, creating solutions out of thin air and community good will that kept the doors open for yet another week, until finally it grew too large for its founders to manage.

As one of the few who knew what was going on back then (and fewer still who are left), I heard echoes of those days reverberate through the accolades at Jim’s memorial service. For example, I remembered how the quiet (and usually anonymous) generosity of the extended Simkin family, some of whom shared our Christmas meal, shaped the cultural landscape of Winnipeg, from support of the arts to founding the Winnipeg Sun and creating the Winnipeg Jets.

As a young adult back then, I glimpsed their tough-minded, pragmatic and visionary leadership, grounded in a community they knew well, done with a handshake and a smile. Closer to that action than I ever was, I think Jim learned wisdom from them that was reflected in the future trajectory of his life, just as it has been in mine.

Back in 1982, our focus was on the people of Poland. The problems of cold, hunger and a crumbled Soviet economy were a daily reality as people risked their lives for a better future. Truth comes at a cost; hopes and dreams need to be anchored in hard work.

Forty years on, little has changed, though the focus has shifted to Ukraine and Russia’s brutal attempt to recreate a regime everyone was happy to see disappear. So, between now and the Holy Night that heralds Ukrainian Christmas, may we all remember to set an extra place at the table for those people this year who need both that meal and the support it includes.

After all, the best answer to our social problems is always to set a larger table, everywhere. As the years went on, our family Christmas meals were filled with faces and voices from many parts of the world, and their stories became forever interwoven with our own.

Finally, as stated by the Winnipeg Sun’s unflinching masthead from Joseph Howe that bannered that last Christmas editorial of mine: “Leave an unshackled press as a legacy to your children.”

Thanks for your part in doing this, Jim. Someday, perhaps your kids will play the oboe with mine.

Peter Denton has written regularly for the (independent) Winnipeg Free Press since 2015.