The Guardian’s point is that National Bodies when creating national institutions, should use sound judgment, because of the financial investment involved. This is only reasonable.
Your Assembly must therefore decide what to do about the Laurentian School, and you are free to make your own decisions.
He would be very happy to have the National Assembly maintain the grave of dear Sutherland Maxwell[25]. His association, not only with Canada and the inception of the Faith there, but with the World Centre and the Shrine of the Báb, naturally endears him to all the friends, and his grave should be a national memorial. When the time comes to erect the tombstone, the question of receiving contributions from your Body can be considered.
He feels that the Canadian Community, old in the Northern Hemisphere, but young in its independence, is showing great promise, and he is proud of it and of the spirit that animates both its National Assembly and its members. He also feels confident it will distinguish itself, not only during the coming year, but during the next 10 years before our Most Great Jubilee falls due in 1963.
With warm Bahá’í love,
R. RABBANI.
P.S.—Regarding your question concerning St. John’s, Newfoundland, and the believers living outside the town limits: no exception to the general rule can be made in this case.
Dear and Valued Co-Workers:
The Plan, with which the immediate destinies of the valiant, newly emerged independent, highly promising Canadian Bahá’í Community are linked is, as it approaches its closing stage, passing through a very critical period in its unfoldment. Proclaiming as it does the formal association of the second Bahá’í community to attain an independent status in the Western Hemisphere with its sister communities who, in various parts of the Bahá’í World, are prosecuting specific Plans designed to foster their organic development, signalizing the alignment of this community as the sole ally of the chief Executors of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s Master Plan, this collective fate-laden enterprise upon which this youthful and virile member of the World Bahá’í Family has so whole-heartedly and enthusiastically launched—an enterprise on the successful consummation of which the effective initiation of its glorious mission, far beyond the borders of the Dominion of Canada, must ultimately depend—such an enterprise, however vast the field in which it operates, and no matter how circumscribed the resources of the small band of stalwart pioneers engaged in its prosecution—must, under no circumstances be allowed to register a failure.
In Newfoundland, in Greenland, among the Eskimos and Indians, through the incorporation of its National Assembly, the immediate objectives have been practically attained. The attention of the entire community must, in the remaining months ahead, be focused on the dire necessity of multiplying, at whatever cost, the number of pioneers, the rapid formation of groups, and the conversion of groups into Assemblies, so that the complete and total success of the Plan may be assured, and a triumphant community may step forward, confident and unencumbered by any liabilities, into a vast arena of service, prosecute a still more glorious mission, and win still mightier victories.