A Provocative Public VoiceIn his many endeavours, Ted Byfield has helped the Church regain some lost ground, and has given a voice to millions who haven't seen themselves reflected in the mainstream media.by Doris FleckWhen Ted Byfield was in his mid-20s, he came face to face with the truth of Christianity. But he was convinced that becoming a believer would be death to his journalism career.
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Ted Byfield
Photo courtesy Peter Fleck |
"I thought nobody would take you seriously if you were regarded as a religious kook," says the 77-year-old with a gruff chuckle. "The newspaper business had been my religion."
Committing his life to Jesus Christ did not take away his love for writing, but it did mean journalistic fame was no longer "the be all and end all of everything."
Byfield and his wife Virginia still marvel today at the "amazing life He's given us" since then, including a remarkable journalistic career. Byfield founded the weekly magazine Alberta Report and led it for 25 years; he pioneered the 12-volume series Alberta in the 20th Century; and currently he's six books into a series which aims to dramatically recount the history of Christianity since Pentecost.
Ken Whyte, editor-in-chief of Maclean's magazine and a former protégé of Byfield's, says, "He responds like a kid every time he learns something new. He'll just completely light up."
Byfield's contagious excitability is paired with an "awesome entrepreneurial energy" according to Ezra Levant, publisher of The Western Standard. "To embark upon the Christian History Project when other people would be finding a vacation home somewhere shows the guy knows he's called to do a lot of work and won't stop until it's done."
Preston Manning agrees. "Perseverance is certainly a characteristic of the Byfields," says the founder of the Reform Party. "A lot of Christians will profess to hold certain principles and doctrines, but the real test of what you believe is what you do. The application speaks a lot louder than just your adherence to a creed." Manning maintains that the couple have consistently tried to apply their faith in their journalism and politics as well as their historical work.
Surviving a rough start
The only creed Byfield adhered to early in life was survival. His father was a Toronto journalist, an alcoholic and an avowed atheist. Byfield's earliest memory is of a typewriter clattering all through the night. "If [Dad's] paycheque survived the pubs, it had to get past the racetracks," he recalls.
Often there was no money for rent, so the first of the month frequently saw them on the move. Byfield's frustrated mother took to throwing dishes and glassware at his father, who shielded himself behind their card table. "It was a wild kind of childhood," Byfield says. Outside school hours, he earned money delivering the Star and the Telegram.
Despite his father's example, Byfield decided his calling was also to be a newspaperman, inspired partly by The Philadelphia Story, a movie in which Jimmy Stewart portrayed a man-of-the-people writer.
And despite his father's atheism, for two years during the Second World War Byfield attended Lakefield Preparatory School, an Anglican boy's school near Peterborough, Ontario. There he received what he calls the first positive moral instruction in his life. Staff took chapel attendance seriously and turned rule-breaking into a lesson. They were also passionate about music, and Byfield learned to sing—an activity he loves to this day.
Smitten at age 20
He began writing for newspapers at 17 and two years later met a vivacious young woman at the Ottawa Journal. Virginia Nairn worked there for the summer before going off to university, and left Byfield smitten. He's never recovered.
"We wanted to get married anyway … but [it was] a condition of her employment." |
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"She could quote poetry from Byron," Byfield marvels. "And she had a very good sense of humour because she laughed at my jokes, which was very discerning of her. I just enjoyed her company to no end—still do."
Virginia admired Byfield's decisive nature. "As soon as he's thought something out, he wants to act on it," she says.
At age 20, Byfield got a job at the Timmins Daily Press. Virginia, then 19, hoped she could work there as well. The paper had just suffered a sexual scandal. Not wanting any repeats, they agreed to hire Virginia only if she married Byfield.
"We wanted to get married anyway," Byfield said, "but this was made a condition of her employment."
They picked up a license and found a United Church minister. They phoned their parents at the last minute, ignored their opposition and cast the composing room foreman as best man and the society reporter as bridesmaid.
"We got out the first edition of the paper, rushed over to the manse, got married, came back for a 15-minute reception with sandwiches and a few drinks and put out the second edition," Byfield chuckles.
Fought over C.S. Lewis
It was the beginning of a love and a working collaboration that have lasted 56 years. "We edit copy together and we argue over the right word," Byfield says. "It's the most tremendous fun."
After a failed attempt to launch a newspaper in northern Ontario, the couple moved to Manitoba with their two young boys, Mike and Link, where Byfield secured a job at the Winnipeg Free Press and a $40-a-month apartment.
The next few years would prove to be spiritually priceless. Byfield was befriended by a copy editor who challenged his beliefs and gave him a copy of C. S. Lewis's Mere Christianity. Up to that point he hadn't realized "that you could make a logical defence of Christianity," Byfield says. Now, "it began to make an awful lot of sense." He and Virginia read the book together, but "she fought every paragraph."
"It seemed very extreme," she recalls, and even considered leaving Byfield in 1952 when he began attending St. John's Anglican Cathedral regularly.
"I had nowhere to go," Virginia admits. "I guess Ted argued me into it—Ted and Lewis. I couldn't really argue with Lewis. You want to believe these things because it gives life and purpose."
Dragging men to choir
Soon after, the rector made a desperate appeal for men to join the choir. Accustomed to bar ballads and singing in the tub, Byfield was surprised and moved by the impact of Brahms, Bach and particularly Handel's Messiah and its "Hallelujah Chorus." But he was about to be challenged by more than music styles.
"Ted was always bringing derelicts home … " |
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The choirmaster asked Byfield to help find more members. "I knew [this meant] I would have to bear witness to Christ in the newsroom," Byfield recalls. He feared such rejection that his career would be over. "Most of those guys were very, very skeptical about God."
Byfield began bringing in reporters, bar regulars, men from the army and ex-cons. "We got 18 men into that choir in the next three or four months," he says. "Five of those guys became Anglican priests."
Some of the men were in financial trouble and ended up living with the Byfields. "Ted was always bringing derelicts home," Virginia remembers.
The choir grew, but so did Byfield's professional reputation. Within four years he became the highest-paid reporter in Winnipeg and in 1957 won the National Newspaper Award for his coverage of the election campaign.
Starting a school
At the time, Byfield was starting to dream up a different kind of campaign—a personal effort to correct a societal drift.
"Everybody gets their beliefs of right and wrong from authorities," he explains. In Western society family, Church, school and the media once reinforced the same value system. But it became clear to Byfield that the Church and the family had lost much of their influence during his lifetime.
He concluded the Church needed to regain some lost ground. He co-founded the St. John's Cathedral Boys' School and left journalism for ten years to teach.
"In many cases in life, when [a Christian] sees something to be done that they know they could do, this is God talking to them," Byfield believes.
With an emphasis on biblical and moral values, the school built a strong outdoor program into their curriculum including canoe trips of up to 2,800 km.
With the motto "We offer no fame, fortune, security or comfort, only life and that abundantly," the program "certainly made the boys think about God," says Byfield. "A lot of them became practising Christians as adults."
Eventually another two schools were started in Ontario and Alberta, but only the school in Edmonton still exists.
Starting a magazine
The school program also required students to perform manual labour. When the Byfields moved to Edmonton with their six children to start the school there, the boys worked in printing and, in 1973, began producing St. John's Edmonton Report.
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Ted and Virginia Byfield are working on getting the last six volumes of the Christian History Project into print.
Photo courtesy Peter Fleck. |
In the early years school staff ran the magazine. All employees earned $1 per day plus living expenses and were housed in a communal apartment block where they attended morning and evening services.
Often working 72 hours straight to put an issue "to bed," Byfield realized change was necessary when Virginia, also working on the magazine, fell asleep at the wheel and crashed their car. (Actually, it had been a tough year for all the St. John's community, which mourned a tragedy in 1978: twelve boys and an inexperienced teacher from the Ontario school drowned in Lake Timiskaming on June 11, the first day of a canoe trip to James Bay.)
Byfield left the Edmonton school, hired outside help, and in 1979 Alberta Report was born.
"We wanted to put out a magazine whose news judgment was predicated on the proposition that Christianity is true," Byfield explains. "This very definitely changes the content of a magazine." Alberta Report gained a reputation of railing against feminism, abortion, homosexuality and the public school system.
Ezra Levant of The Western Standard remembers reading the Report at a young age. "Ted gave a voice to millions of people who didn't see themselves reflected in the mainstream media. I'm Jewish myself and I'm glad I learned about Christianity from Ted rather than from the mainstream media which distorts and defames Christianity. If I had taken my lessons of what being a Christian means from The Globe and Mail, I don't think I would be as pro-Christian as I am today."
Byfield set high standards for editorial accuracy and creativity. But he also had a habit of picking up strays from bars or school dropouts and turning them into reporters. Many writers who cut their teeth at Alberta Report fondly called it "the school of Ted."
Ken Whyte of Maclean's, who worked at Alberta Report 20 years ago, says Byfield taught him that "It's okay to be provocative. It's okay to make enemies. It's actually your job to outrage people because there isn't any middle ground that everybody's going to agree upon."
Byfield never abandoned his principles even when the homosexual community boycotted the magazine's advertisers.
Constantly struggling for economic viability, Alberta Report survived for 25 years before publishing its last issue in June 2003.
"It played a huge role in Alberta and regional life in the broadest sense," says Whyte. "Ted has been an important voice in journalistic Canada for half a century. He raised a generation or two of other journalists, and in the end this is a far greater accomplishment than that of many Canadian journalists who are much more celebrated."
Making history
At 77, Byfield hasn't slowed down. He writes three columns a week, answers dozens of phone calls a day and is struggling with Virginia to get the last six volumes of the Christian History Project into print. Although almost 100,000 copies of the first six books have been sold, the project has not proven financially viable. Organizers are trying to register as a charity and have it publish the remaining volumes.
He recalls Virginia once saying, "You've hardly done a day's work in your life," and he laughingly admits she's right. "It's been so much fun."
The Byfields also remain active in their church, St. Herman's, an English-language Russian Orthodox congregation in Edmonton.
They serve in very ordinary ways by selling garlic sausage before Easter, greeting people on Sunday mornings, driving people to the hostel, giving some cash to "the guy who's down," and opening their home for church events, according to Rod Tkatchuk, past president of St. Herman's.
When asked about the role prayer has played in his endeavours, Byfield laughs. "That's like asking how significant you think breathing is. If I try to hold my breath it doesn't work. I know if I stop praying, things start to go wrong."
The dreams Byfield yearned for in his youth—success and recognition—are topics he's reluctant to discuss now.
"We can't see significance," he says. "You could have an effect on some kid who, 50 years from then, might do something beyond your wildest imagination. You may not even be aware you had any effect on him. Most of the things you do, you don't do; God does them through you. That sounds like you're talking piously but it's a literal fact. I haven't got any accomplishments."
Doris Fleck of Calgary, Alberta, is a contributing writer of Faith Today.
Originally published in Faith Today, March/April 2006.
Used with permission of author. Copyright © 2006 Christianity.ca.