Canadian Baha’is elect their National Spiritual Assembly

To view more pictures of the Baha'i National Convention, please view our Flickr account at http://www.flickr.com/photos/cbns/.

The members of the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha’is of Canada elected in April 2011 to serve for a period of one year.Toronto, Ontario, 3 May 2011 (CBNS) — At the annual Baha’i National Convention, held in Toronto this past weekend, delegates from across the country elected the national governing council of the Baha’i Community of Canada.

The members elected to the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha’is of Canada are Karen McKye of Toronto, Deloria Bighorn of Vancouver Island, Enayat Rawhani of Toronto, Simon Grandy of Vancouver, Judy Filson of Toronto, Elizabeth Wright of Quebec City, Mehran Anvari of Hamilton, Gordon Naylor of Stratford, Ontario, and Susanne Tamas of Almonte, Ontario.

Members are elected for one-year terms at the annual convention, attended by delegates from every province and territory in Canada, representing some 35,000 Canadian Baha’is.

In addition to the election of the National Spiritual Assembly, the four day convention, from Thursday 28 April to Sunday 1 May, reviewed progress in the development of the community and discussed a new Five Year Plan of action of the Baha’i world community, to run from April 2011 to April 2016.

At the centre of the Baha’i community’s efforts over the coming years will be continuing the progress made in advancing the work of classes that nurture the hearts and minds of children, systematic efforts to empower the energies of youth, the strengthening of meetings that enhance the devotional character of the community, and further development of a program of circles of study, open to all, that enable people to apply spiritual principles to their individual and collective lives.

Group shot of the delegates and other participants at the Baha'i National Convention.Other preoccupations of the assembled delegates and the newly elected National Spiritual Assembly included interest in social action and participation in social discourses of society, continued concern for the safety and security of the much persecuted Baha’i community of Iran, and the commemoration in the coming year of the 100th anniversary of the visit to Canada in 1912 of ‘Abdu’l-Baha, authorized interpreter and head of the Baha’i Faith at that time.

The Baha’i Community of Canada was established in 1898, and the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha’is was incorporated by an Act of the Canadian Parliament in 1949.

For more information on the Baha’i Community of Canada, please visit www.ca.bahai.org.