Every year the Baha’i Community of Montreal participates in the “Salon du livre”, a book exposition that attracts thousands of people to La Place Bonaventure in downtown Montreal. This past November, the Salon du livre Committee decided to invite the children and junior youth who came by the Baha’i booth to take part in a writing competition on the subject of ‘Peace’. They didn’t expect that as many as 266 young people would respond to the challenge. It was decided to invite all participants in the competition to the Bahá’í community’s Intercalary Days Celebration and offer prizes to those who wrote the best Peace Message to the children of the world.
Seventy children, youth and parents accepted the invitation resulting in some 150 participants attending the celebration in the main hall at the Louis Bourgeois Centre. The centre was decorated, turning it into a magical world of games and amusements, with a program that included musical presentations, prayers and songs. Sahar Sabati spoke about the Bahá’í program for the education of junior youth and children, inviting all present to enroll their children in the program offered free in some twenty neighbourhoods in the Montreal area.
Following the broadcast earlier in the year of a spot recorded on the spiritual education of youth for a very popular program called “Ados-Radio” on the CBC French Radio channel, the program showed an interest in producing a 20-minute radio feature on Bahá’í youth. Ania Kazi, a prize winner journalist with Ados-Radio, accompanied a number of young adolescents to a Baha’i Feast, a junior youth session and finally to the Intercalary Days Celebration. She was so impressed that she said she would like to accompany her children to the neighbourhood classes. The radio program will be aired in mid-March 2009.
This joyful event ended with each child receiving a small gift with a quotation from Bahá’u’lláh on the education of children.