Twice Converted

Jim Cavanaugh was not born a thief or a murderer; he became one over the course of time.  His gradual conversion to a criminal lifestyle isn’t exceptional or surprising.  He ran away from his abusive, alcoholic father to a life on the streets of Halifax, Canada.  When the trusted adults who took him in and gave him food began sexually abusing him, he lost all respect and trust for others.  He did what he thought he had to do to survive on the streets.  “I started stealing, and then stealing led to armed robberies, and eventually to the reform school system” he explains.  At the school, as an impressionable 11 year old, he again endured physical and sexual abuse.  “That seared me mentally,” he recalls.  “And I resented adults and those in authority.  I became just full of hate and anger towards them all, and bitter…”

Jim eventually entered the Canadian prison system as a petty thief, but while incarcerated he learned to become a killer.  “I befriended other prisoners who had been in years more than me and had been involved in more crimes than me, and that’s when my criminality started to progress,” Jim explains.  “That’s when I learned about cracking safes, planning and executing armed robbery and how to kill.”  Jim soon became someone to be feared in prison.  “I hurt a lot of people in bad ways physically,” he recalls.  “Slamming their heads into concrete walls, into the steel bars and so forth…”   Eventually Jim killed a fellow prisoner, adding years to his sentence.  “And I didn’t have any remorse at all at that time,” he explains.

His hardened attitude and his life changed completely after a fellow prisoner talked to him about Jesus.  “Well, it was quite a transformation,” Jim recalls, “I said a prayer of forgiveness and I felt a warmth that went through my body and that shook me up.”  Jim describes an inner healing that took place in his heart after that.  Through counselling and Bible studies offered by PF Canada, Jim studied the Word and strengthened his new faith.  

After 19 years of serving time, Jim left prison in 1983 a changed man.  When one of PF Canada’s staff members asked if he would consider working with PF, he said no.  “I spent 19 years in there,” he said.  “Why should I want to go back in those prisons?”  But he felt a persistent tugging at his heart, so he joined PF Canada and he has now been working in the prisons for nearly 20 years (about as long as the time he served) and, though he is nearing retirement age, he has no plans to stop.  “As long as I have the ability to go from point A to point B I will continue to minister…” he says.

Jim does not take his ability to get to point B for granted.  Late in his prison term, Jim suffered an aneurism in his back that left him partially paralyzed. Though the challenging condition did not shake his strong faith, he did feel discouraged about his future, and he while he prayed he would one day have a wife, he doubted whether anyone would ever want to marry him.  

“But God had something planned,” Jim says now.  Shortly after Jim’s release from prison, one of the prison volunteers he had befriended introduced him to a friend—Shirley, the daughter of a Royal Canadian Mounted Policeman and a nurse at the hospital where he received treatment for his aneurism.  Two years later, they married, and they’ve been together for 24 years.

Though he has struggled with his physical condition, using two canes and a scooter for distances, he has seen God use these physical limitations to speak volumes to the prisoners. One prisoner told him that he had planned to skip Jim’s in-prison Bible study but then realized that if Jim could make such an arduous effort to get to the prison, he could certainly walk across the hall to hear him speak.  That prisoner, Walter Cheheny, went on to form his own ministry that helps ex-offenders with reintegration needs such as clothing and housing.

Jim has led countless inmates and ex-prisoners through their own remarkable journeys of transformation in Christ, including Serge LeClerc, who went from being a narcotics dealer to a Member of the Legislative Assembly in Canada.   Jim recalls that at first Serge said he was not interested in hearing about God, but after seeing Jim struggle with his limited mobility, Serge told him “you had everything taken away from you and yet you are still praising God.”  

Ian David Young, a chaplain in Canada’s Joyceville Institution says that, “Jim’s example is a powerful witness to the men of a life-changing relationship with God sustained over a long period.”  Jim is just one of PF Canada’s many staff and volunteers who through their presence and their relationships are making a real difference in the lives of those affected by crime.