As happens each springtime during the Baha’i holy festival of Ridvan, delegates from across Canada again elected their national governing council, the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha’is of Canada, on the weekend of April 23-26 in Toronto.
Delegates from Nunavut, the Northwest Territories, Yukon and all ten provinces elected Deloria Bighorn, Karen McKye, Mehran Anvari, Elizabeth Wright, Judy Filson, Enayat Rawhani, Ciprian Jauca, Hoda Farahmandpour, and Susanne Tamas to serve on the National Spiritual Assembly for the coming year.
The six women and three men elected to the Baha’i National Assembly come from Vancouver and Vancouver Island, Hamilton, Quebec City, Almonte, Ontario, and Toronto. They were welcomed to their service by a long, standing ovation of the delegates, an expression of love and support that reflects the wholehearted embrace by the Baha’i community of the results of the unique election process employed in national and local Baha’i communities around the world.
The Baha’i election gives to each elector unfettered freedom to vote confidentially for those entirely of his or her own choosing among all the adults of the national community. It is a democratic process that is sacred and dignified, free from the personal ambition and partisanship by which the intrigue of nomination and propaganda of campaigning infect and distort the democratic process. The result is at once joyous and profound in its implications. It generates and sustains a healthy and mature relationship between individuals and the institutions that guide the community and tend to its administrative arrangements.
The delegates to the National Convention of the Baha’is of Canada also deliberated on the achievements and the emerging challenges of the plans and actions now being pursued in Canada and around the world. The Convention focused on efforts to advance and expand the current framework of action that Baha’is and their friends and partners are pursuing in communities across Canada. Notably– those efforts that aim to educate and inspire children and youth and those that involve learning about devotional and moral and spiritual educational processes in the community. Inspired by reflection on the unity and oneness of the human family, the delegates shared the importance of loving fellowship and mutual learning in these community building efforts, with the goal of involving all members of society, young and old, and from every background to participate, so that each and all can contribute their part to invigorating and transforming society.
Delegates agreed that central to an advance in the well-being and prosperity of Canada is a more determined effort to resist the forces of materialism by commitment to community-building activities, to bend every effort to overcome the false ideologies and antagonisms that fracture society, exploit discontent and resentment, and intensify the decline of that moral resilience essential to community vitality. Of special note, this year’s Convention recommended that efforts be made to have the Baha’i community play its part in addressing the injustices and inequities that are so acutely felt by so many in contemporary society, and most particularly by Canada’s Aboriginal peoples.