Alberta: Milad Asdaghi, Nazila Ghasemi, Tony Liu, Shamim Mehrabkhani, and Sina Misaghian
The Atlantic Provinces: Ryan Brennan, Kristi Petro, Hedda Schuurman, Gnei (Kumala) Sobhani, and Kelley Wright
British Columbia:
Charlene Antinuk, Jason Burtwistle, Tabasom Eblaghie, Nabet Fani, Neil MacMillan, Chohre Rassekh, Alaleh Rohani, Pegah Seisan, and Cindy Snedden
Ontario:
Sonya Appadoo, Tyrone Davids, Livia Dittmer, Jeff Hamilton-Bachiu, Jane Hoy, Pejman Mosleh, Roya Mostaghim-Vaezi, Todd Smith, and Melanie Vafaie
Quebec:
Josée Cardinal, Dave Courtemanche, Gregory Fortin-Vidah, Mitra Javanmardi, Nabil Nakhostine, Ilya Shodjaee-Zrudlo, Leyla Shodjai, Anne Skeaff and Laurie Zrudlo
Saskatchewan and Manitoba:
Sandra Agahi, Sally Greenough, Ward Johnston, Payam Towfigh, and Joanne Yeo

Longtime members Elizabeth Wright and Deloria Bighorn retired from service on the National Assembly. Deloria Bighorn was elected to the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of Canada in 2009, and has served as the Chair of that institution from 2012 to 2023. [Bahá'í Canada 24 February 2023]

She had earned a medical degree at the age of 52 and practiced as a family and palliative-care physician.

In 1984 she became active in the nuclear disarmament movement and a member of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War Canada and co-wrote a book, Enough Blood Shed: 101 Solutions to Violence, Terror and War.

Awards she received over the years include the Queen Elizabeth II Golden Jubilee Medal from the Governor General, the Gandhi Prize, the Award of Excellence from Doctors of B.C. and, with Down, the 2019 Distinguished Achievement Award from the Canadians for a Nuclear Weapons Convention. [Condolences; Times Colonist 18 December 2022] [key]

In addition, the National Assembly is pleased to convey the results of the election of its officers: Chair – Deloria Bighorn; Vice-chair – Ciprian Jauca; Treasurer – Mehran Anvari; Secretary – Karen McKye. [Bahá'í Canada 3 May 2022

The inspirational story of Richard St. Barbe Baker, aka the “Man of the Trees,” The heritage documentary The Legacy of Saskatoon’s Secret Forest tells the story of his remarkable life and achievements. Note there is a 15 minute version heritage documentary and a one hour long presentation with greetings from around the world. The 15 minute prequel film “Richard St. Barbe Baker Park” tells how the heritage documentary came to be. From roots in Saskatoon he went on to inspire tree planting and forest protection around the world. The International Tree Foundation, which he founded in 1922, is still active in 14 countries. Countless people motivated by him are environmental champions today. A companion curriculum describes his holistic world view, and his daring life of action on behalf of the earth.

The Continental Board of Counsellors appointed the following 26 Auxiliary Board members to serve in Canada. Those serving on the Propagation Board:

Mert Ozyonum, Atlantic Provinces
Betty Dai, Anthony Jjumba, Shawyun Refahi and Anisa Skuce-Newell in British Columbia
Lita Cameron, Elisa Cooper, Neda Farahmandpour, Caitlin Moore in Ontario
Maëlle Turbide in Québec
Dagmawit E. Habtemariam in Saskatchewan-Manitoba
Drew Erickson in Alberta

Alanna Robertson Vreeland in the Atlantic Provinces
Agazzi Abay Tsehaye, Nabih Ardekany, Navid Jaberi, Lori Mason in British Columbia
Ravin Appadoo, Rebecca Hamilton-Bachiu, Justin Kianfar, Bronwyn Naylor and Golbon Singh in Ontario
Mona Pirmoradi in Québec
Anis Sabet in Saskatchewan-Manitoba
Karolina Drabik and Shabnam Shakibaei in Alberta

The Counsellors expressed their love and gratitude to these distinguished friends who have served so faithfully and sacrificially and who will be relieved of this service as of 1 July 2021. They were: Sara Chesley, Sohayl Ghadirian, Alaleh Rohani, Robert M. Ngunjiri, Rhona Scoffield, Sophie Turbide, Stacey-Michelle Tekye, and Tahirih North. [Letter from the National Assembly to the Canadian community dated 16 June 2021 S113255] [key]

Canadian Council of Imams is an organization of religious leadership of Imams (Sunni and Shi’ia), representing the Islamic Community in Canada. [Office of Public Information] [key]

   After leaving a career in market development in the federal tourism agency that included postings in Sydney, Australia and St. John’s, Newfoundland, Marlene served in the community development department of the Bahá’í National Centre in Thornhill, Ontario. Back in St. Marys, she devoted her life to working at the Stratford Shakespearean Festival, travelling and writing. She loved working as a Festival usher and, more recently, as a volunteer tour guide. Many of her trips involved Bahá’í service projects in destinations such as Cyprus, Ireland and Western Samoa and some quirky journeys such as travelling on a cargo ship from New York City to Chile and back.

   Marlene authored two biographies, Take My Love to the Friends: The Story of Laura R. Davis and Faithful Friends: Founding the Toronto Bahá’í Community 1919–1938, one play named Tabreez, several dramatic readings and essays and a dozen essays on Shakespeare plays. Joining a group of writers at the Desert Rose Bahá’í Institute in Arizona for annual winter gatherings, she co-founded the "Write Life", an annual writers’ retreat, serving as a co-facilitator for two years. Marlene was named the first Writer in Residence at Desert Rose.

   For a list of Marlen's Dramatic Readings see Bahá'í Library.

The Board also expressed their heartfelt appreciation to Mr. Bruce Moore and Mrs. Donna Seyed Mahmoud whose term of service as Deputy Trustees has concluded. [letter from the NSA dated 8 December 2020] [key]

He was a member of the National Spiritual Assembly of Canada from 1960 to 1985 and served the last twenty years as the general secretary. In 1985. He was appointed director-general of the Bahá'í International Community's Office of Public Information at the World Centre. He served in that capacity until 1993 when he was elected to the Universal House of Justice. He retired from the House of Justice in 2005 due to considerations of age and related needs of the Faith. [BWNS1455]

The Office of Public Affairs works on a range of topics and issues that are related to the well-being of Canadian society. Many of these issues fall within one of our areas of focus, which are broad domains in which we try to build relationships, develop content, and create opportunities for learning and dialogue that can eventually contribute to public policy.The areas of focus are: Citizenship and Diversity, Reconciliation, Religion in Public Life, Gender Equality as well as The Role of Youth in Society and Relationship with the Environment.

The Office also communicates with the Canadian government regarding the ongoing persecution of Baha’is in Iran and Yemen.

The site also hosts a document library with official statements and reports produced by the Office. [CBNS] [key]

From the windswept Canadian prairies to the cities and villages of Europe and North Africa, Shar Mitchell's search for meaning and purpose ultimately led her to embrace the Bahá'í Faith. In this unselfconsciously honest memoir, she explores life's changes and chances—from her youthful exploration of new places and ideas to her experiences with love, marriage and loss. After her first marriage ended in divorce, she met and married her "bridegroom from Baghdad", Redwan Moqbel. Born to a poor Bahá'í family in a dusty border town between Iran and Iraq, he was an internationally-renowned medical scientist by the time he and Shar married. But his own life wasn't without tribulation. Iraq, a country that persecuted its Bahá'i minority, sentenced Redwan to life in prison in absentia and jailed his mother for many years. Shar's dream of meeting her courageous in-laws would finally come true because of a catastrophic health crisis—Redwan's difficult battle with cancer. Revealing the facets of a life equally shaped by curiosity, hardship and faith, The Bridegroom from Baghdad is an inspiriting window into facing even the most difficult challenges with courage, acceptance, and resilience.

• Bani Dugal: “The Equality of Women and Men: Divine Imperative for an Age of Transition.”
• Hugh Locke: “Half the Sky, Half the Land: The Role of Women Farmers in Transforming Agriculture,”
  Hugh Locke is president and co-founder of the Smallholder Farmers Alliance (SFA), a non-profit working with small-scale family farmers to help feed and reforest a renewed Haiti. He is author of The Haiti Experiment, and writes and lectures extensively on smallholder farming and sustainable development. Earlier in his career Hugh was director of the Office of Public Information at the Baha’i International Community in New York and served as a member of the program committee for the 1992 Baha’i World Congress. He was mentored by forester and environmentalist Richard St. Barbe Baker (1889 – 1982), established the Baker archives at the University of Saskatchewan, and continues to serve as literary trustee.
• Payam Akhavan: “Equality and Justice, Global Perspectives” and “Countering War, Hate, and Violence Assembly.”
• Emily Wright: “Making Interreligious Chaplaincy Education Meaningfully Inclusive” and “A New Cup of Grace—A Ukulele Opera
• Hooshmand Badee: “Interfaith Peacemaking Perspectives from Across the World.”
• Nader Saiedi: Presenting the new documentary film The Gate: Dawn of the Bahá’í Faith.
• Paul Hanley: “Man of the Trees: Richard St. Barbe Baker, the First Global Environmentalist.”
• JoAnn Borovicka: “Amazing Faiths! An Interactive Workshop on Interfaith Dialogue.”
• Robert Atkinson: “New Thoughts in Interfaith Spirituality.”
• Robert Stockman: “The Characteristics of Bahá’í Interfaith Dialogue.” Candace Hill: “From Shiraz to Chicago: Bahá’í Women of the East and the West”
• Edward Price: “The Divine Curriculum: Understanding the Báb, Divine Educator for the Modern Era.”
• Sovaida Maani Ewing: “Achieving World Peace: Bahá’í and Catholic Teachings.”
• Jean Muza: “Bahá’í Civic Engagement: How to Maneuver in America’s Divisive Political Landscape.”
• Robert Atkinson: “The Golden Rule as the Basis for a Global Justice System: An Interfaith Perspective with a Call to Action.”
• Edward Price: “The Divine Curriculum Concept as a Framework for Interfaith Inclusion and Love.” [CBN-Preparation; CBN-Inclusion; CBN-Films]

  The Hindu Swami Agnivesh said that instead of spending trillions of dollars on the war system, the peoples of the world need to unite and create a world parliament based on an Earth Constitution. He said that “without a world government, we cannot solve our major world problems.” [Black News 6Feb2022] [key]

Richard St. Barbe Baker was an inspirational visionary and pioneering environmentalist who is credited with saving and planting billions of trees. He saved lives, too, through his ceaseless global campaign to raise the alarm about deforestation and desertification and by finding effective, culturally sensitive ways for people to contribute to a more peaceful and greener world. He was also an Edwardian eccentric whose obsession with trees caused him to neglect his family; the devout son of an evangelical preacher who became a New Age hero; an unapologetic colonial officer fired for defending indigenous Africans; a forester who rarely had a steady income; a failed entrepreneur and inventor; a proud soldier and peace activist; a brilliant writer, speaker, and raconteur who made wild claims about the effectiveness of his conservation efforts. His encounters with historical figures like FDR, Nehru, and George Bernard Shaw are eye-popping, as were his accomplishments.

She and her husband, Dr Mirza Javid, had been residents in the Hamilton area since 1968 when he was employed by the public health department. Prior to that they had lived in Montreal where they had settled when they first arrived in Canada in 1966. Aghdas was famous in the Hamilton area for her Friday night firesides which she held faithfully, sometimes attracting as many as 80 attendees.

In 2001, she was chosen to be among a group of Canadian Baha'is — part of 4,500 from around the world — to travel to Israel to witness the opening of a kilometre-long series of garden terraces surrounding the Bahá'í temple on Mount Carmel. [Bahá'í Canada Vol 14 Issue 3]

Every year she would hold a tea to which she invited local dignitaries. [Bahá'í Canada Vol 16 Issue 1 May 2003 p31]

She had been predeceased by her husband in in 1999. She left children Sussan, Ladan and Jasmine, four granddaughters, one grandson, one great-grandson and family in Iran, England, Germany and Brazil. [Hamilton Spectator; Dignity Memorial] [key]

The neighbourhood of Greenboro had been a centre of intense activity since 2014, with high receptivity. When the renting of facilities to accommodate these activities on an ad-hoc basis became impractical, the National Spiritual Assembly approved the rental of a former commercial space. Volunteers worked tirelessly to renovate the property to suit the activities that would take place there. This initiative was made possible because of the the National Assembly's Community Properties Fund. [Bahá'í Canada 2019-03-27] [key]

Canada is poised to reconcile its centuries-long fraught history with Indigenous peoples and to establish justice. What fundamental spiritual principles should guide this challenging process and bring together peoples who have been separated for so long?

In this part-memoir, part-scholarly work, Patricia Verge records her decades-long friendship with the Stoney Nakoda Nation in southern Alberta. She explores how her spiritual journey has been intimately entwined with service among Indigenous people and confronts her own ignorance of the true history of Canada, taking for her guidance this quote from the writings of the Bahá'í Faith: "a massive dose of truth must be administered to heal."

An engaging and timely work, Equals and Partners is ultimately a story of love and commitment to the principle of the oneness of humanity.

In 1919 a small and diverse group of people in Toronto, Ontario accepted the teachings of a new divine educator, Bahá'ú'lláh. During the next nineteen years, they kept the flame of faith alive until achieving the major milestone of electing the first local governing body of their Bahá'í community. Faithful Friends documents the trajectory of a faith community building its Bahá'í identity.

The Community Properties Fund were intended to provide the ongoing material resources necessary for this advancement. The National Spiritual Assembly contributed an initial $2.5 million to this Fund, and called on the community to match this amount over the remainder of the current Five Year Plan. Returns from this sum will then generate funds allocated to community properties. [Bahá'í Canada 2019-03-27

He earned his BA and two master's degrees in Oregon and Chicago where he became a Bahá’í. Ted met his wife Joan Storie at the Bahá'í House of Worship in Chicago. They married in 1951 and pioneered to Whitehorse in 1953 where they earned the title, Knights of Bahá'u'lláh. During their time in the Yukon they were adopted by the Tlingit First Nations of Carcross-Tagish. In 1965 Ted was appointed as an Auxiliary Board Member for Alaska by Zikrullah Khadem and served in that capacity along with Howard Brown.

Ted and Joanie relocated to Red Deer, Alberta in 1972 and Joanie passed away in 2000. [Bahaipedia; CBN 410 p5; Find a grave]

Professor Cotler was the Director of the Human Rights program in the Law Faculty at the University of McGill and was a Member of Parliament from 1999 until 2015. During this time he served as Justice Minister from 2003-2006.

After his retirement from public life Mr Cotler founded the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights. [CBNS 27 Sep 2016]

In late 2022 the film First to Stand: The Cases and Causes of Irwin Cotler was released. It was written, directed and produced by Irene Lilienheim Angelicco and Abbey Jack Neidik and follows international human rights lawyer Irwin Cotler and his team of young activists at the Raoul Wallenberg Centre as they take on the cases and causes of political prisoners and human rights activists including Raif Badawi and Shaparak Shajarizadeh, battling against the world's most repressive regimes.

Tending the Garden is a biography of Rosemary and Emeric Sala who became Baha'is in Montreal at a time when there were some sixty members in all of Canada. It is told in the Sala's words, using excerpts of letters and papers spanning the years 1926 to 1990. Included is correspondence to and from Shoghi Effendi, Ruhiyyih Khanum, May and Sutherland Maxwell, among many others.

It is an inspiring collection of thirty-seven personal stories of elder Bahá’ís whose commitment and service laid the foundations of the Bahá’í Faith around the world.

Fred Graham was a man of humble beginnings who met trials and tests with an indomitable spirit and emerged as one of the foremost Canadian Baha’i servants in the time following the turmoil of the Great Depression and the Second World War. In the words of the Universal House of Justice, Fred Graham became a “devoted servant,” an “inspiring teacher” and an “exemplary believer”.

At Ridván 2016, with the start of the new Five Year Plan, Darlene Cameron was invited to serve with Gregory on the new Area Teaching Committee.,

Beginning with their childhood years, this is the story of May Bolles and Sutherland Maxwell; their youth, their meeting and courtship in Paris; their marriage;their first pilgrimages; the birth of their daughter and the historic visit of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá to their home in Montreal in 1912.

The second volume The Maxwells of Montreal: Vol 2: Middle Years 1923-1937, Late Years 1937-1952 was published by George Ronald in 2012. It appears that it is only available in the Kindle edition.

Completing the story of the Maxwells, including the pilgrimages of May and Mary Maxwell in the early years of the Guardian's ministry; their contributions to the advancement of the Bahá'í Faith in Canada, the United States, France and Germany; the marriage of Mary Maxwell to Shoghi Effendi; and Sutherland Maxwell's crowning achievement as architect of the Shrine of the Báb.

Beth, a teacher by training, has taught English in Arizona, China, Japan, and Sakhalin Island, then pioneered to Nunavut where she, among many other things, started a painting project, “The Arctic Youth Art initiative,” which has reached youth in many Inuit settlements and led to her winning this award.

She first learned of the Faith from Val (Mrs Hayden Nichols neé Valeria Lamb in Lisbon in 1948. Val had been taught by Beulah Storrs Lewis in 1936 in Los Angeles. [DRDA157]

She pioneered to her native Hungary, Säo Paulo, Brazil, various place in Canada and spent three and a half years in Martinique.

In 1995 she published her first autobiography, it was in Hungarian. Her English autobiography was called Dreams, Nightmares, and Dreams Again and it was published in 2000 by White Mountain Publications. [DNDA76]

Her Master's thesis at Laval University was A proposed world order: Baha'i teachings and Institutions 1968. [DRDA120,144] [key]