John Robarts (1901 - 1991)

John Aldham Robarts was born on 2 November 1901 in Waterloo, Ontario, to Aldham Wilson Robarts and Rachel Mary Montgomery Campbell Robarts.

An extraordinary thread of dedication to serving God seems to have been woven into the very fabric of John Robarts’ life. Looking back to his great-grandmother, we find a woman giving birth to a son during a hurricane in Barbados, in the only safe place available to her in that raging tempest, an old bake-oven, half underground. At the height of the storm, she made a vow that if she and her baby were spared, she would dedicate its life to the service of God.

As if in fulfilment of that promise, that son grew up to become the Reverend Thomas Tempest Robarts, a Canon in the Anglican Church in Thorold, Ontario. He had three sons and two daughters. The third son, Aldham Wilson Robarts, John Robart’s father, remained an Anglican. The two daughters, Ella and Grace Robarts, became Bahá’ís in 1906, when John Robarts was five years old.

John Robart’s father was manager of the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce in Port Arthur (now Thunder Bay), and it was here that John Robarts and his two older sisters completed their elementary schooling. He attended Ridley College in St. Catharines, Ontario, leaving at the age of 17 to accept a position as secretary to a Canadian National Railways superintendent. With a concentration and dedication that became characteristic of all his work, he quickly acquired proficiency in secretarial skills that proved invaluable to him in the years to come. Mr. Robarts went on to start his own business in partnership with James D. Graham and established the Overhead Door Company of Canada in Toronto.

John Robarts married Audrey FitzGerald in 1928, and together they had four children. The economic depression in 1934 forced him to sell his company, but he managed to find employment for each of his approximately 20 workers before accepting an invitation to join a life insurance company. It was in the 1930s that John and Audrey became attracted to the Bahá’í Faith and were taught mainly by his Aunt Grace and Uncle Harlan Ober. They became Bahá’ís in 1937 in Toronto.

From that time forward, John Robarts dedicated himself to the Bahá’í Faith and served it with the deepest devotion. An example of the fruit of this dedication is the key role he played in developing the first Bahá’í communities of Hamilton and Ottawa, Ontario, travelling to Hamilton every week for a year, and to Ottawa for a number of whole weekends, teaching intensively in each city. The first Local Spiritual Assemblies in Hamilton and Ottawa were formed in 1940 and 1948 respectively. Mr. Robarts served on regional and national committees and took every opportunity to teach the Faith. Often on summer evenings, the neighbourhood youngsters around the Robarts’ home in Forest Hill, a Toronto suburb, converged outside, with Mr. Robarts often among them, playing ball or skipping rope or teaching them feats of bicycle riding.

John travelled to many countries, but perhaps his most significant journey was the one he and Audrey Robarts made to Bechuanaland in Africa--a trip inspired by the Guardian in October 1953. Within two months of hearing of Bechuanaland from the Guardian, and having learned from an encyclopaedia that Bechuanaland was a landlocked country the size of France, without tarred roads, and mostly Kalahari desert, they set sail. They parted with their two eldest sons and left behind John’s successful career and their comfortable Toronto home. They were the first Bahá’ís to live in Bechuanaland. John, Audrey, and their youngest son, Patrick, earned the title ‘Knight of Bahá’u’lláh.’

On 2 October 1957, Shoghi Effendi appointed John Robarts a Hand of the Cause of God, the highest office to which an individual could be appointed by the Guardian. Mr. Robarts continued to travel and teach the Bahá’í Faith. Some of the places he travelled to include Southern Rhodesia, Morocco, Liberia, Cameroon, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, the Phillipines, Hawaii, Jamaica, Iceland, Australia, New Zealand, Tahiti, Fiji, Tonga, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, New Caledonia, New Hebrides, and Western Samoa.

In 1984, at the age of 82, Mr. Robarts graciously accepted one last administrative post: he served as a member of the Local Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of Rawdon, Quebec. John Robarts made his last international teaching trip in 1986, to 11 cities in Ireland. The vigour of John Robarts’ half century of sustained service to the Bahá’í Faith stands as awesome testimony to the power of the promised assistance of God. Few people realized that asthma and chronic bronchitis, and later emphysema, were, for much of John’s life, his constant companions. Increasingly, Audrey accompanied him on his travels, thereby extending by years his strenuous and precious teaching activities. He passed away peacefully in Rawdon, Quebec, on 18 June 1991.

* Adapted from Bahá’í World, Vol. 20, 1986-1992, “In Memoriam,” pp. 801-9.