National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of Canada

The National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of Canada, incorporated by an Act of the Canadian Parliament in 1949, is the national governing council of Canada’s 30,000 Bahá’ís. It is a democratically elected body of nine adult believers that guides the activities of the Bahá’í community, supervising its affairs throughout Canada.

The Bahá’í House of Worship for North America, located in Wilmette, Illinois.In addition to supervising Bahá’í activities and maintaining close contact with Local Spiritual Assemblies in Bahá’í communities across Canada, the National Spiritual Assembly oversees the operation of the Bahá’í National Centre in Markham, just outside of Toronto, the Office of Governmental Relations in Ottawa, the Office for the Advancement of Women in Quebec City, the Canadian Bahá’í International Development Agency, and several national properties in various provinces of Canada. Six regional Bahá’í Councils help with this work, directing their energies towards coordinating and advancing Bahá’í work in six regions of Canada: (1) the Atlantic, (2) Quebec, (3) Ontario, (3) Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and north-western Ontario, (4) Alberta, (5) British Columbia and Yukon, and also supervising regional committees for the Northwest Territories and Nunavut.

The National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of Canada has counted among its membership over the years individuals from a wide diversity of cultures, including believers from families with Jewish, Muslim, Christian, and native spirituality in their backgrounds, French-Canadian, aboriginal, Middle Eastern, African-Canadian, Catholic, and Protestant. In recent years, the nine-member body has often had a majority of women members.

The members of the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of Canada who were elected in April 2009 to serve for a period of one year.From 1925 to 1948, Bahá’ís in Canada were part of a joint American and Canadian Bahá’í Community with one governing council called the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States and Canada. Several Canadians served over the years on that National Assembly. Among the notable accomplishments of that National Assembly was the beginnning of construction of the “Mother Temple of the West,” the Bahá’í House of Worship for North America, located in the northern Chicago suburb of Willmette, Illinois, and designed by French-Canadian Louis Bourgeois. The National Spiritual Assembly of the United States and Canada also established a relationship, on behalf of the eight Bahá’í National Spiritual Assemblies then in existence, with the newly formed United Nations. (There are 182 Bahá’í National Assemblies today.)

The Bahá’í International Community today has consultative status with the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) and UNICEF branches of the United Nations. The National Spiritual Assembly of Canada is an affiliate organization of the Bahá’í International Community with its own active and cooperative relationship with the Canadian Government.

In 1948, the two communities in the United States and Canada elected their own governing councils. The National Spiritual Assembly of Canada was elected at the first Canadian Bahá’í National Convention in Montreal in April 1948 and was incorporated by an Act passed by the House of Commons and Senate in 1949, a governmental recognition of the Bahá’í community that was unique in the world at that time.