Letter of April 14, 1948
April 14, 1948.
ELECTION OF FIRST NATIONAL ASSEMBLY AND ANNOUNCEMENT OF FIVE YEAR PLAN
To the First Canadian National Convention.
Hearts uplifted in thanksgiving to Bahá’u’lláh for the epoch-making event of the coming of age of the dearly beloved Canadian Bahá’í Community, the formation of the first National Convention in the City of Montreal and the forthcoming election of Canada’s National Assembly constituting the ninth pillar of the institution of the Universal House of Justice. I acknowledge with reverent gratitude and deepest joy the marvellous influence of the operation of the initial stage in ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s Divine Plan enabling the northernmost community of the followers of the Faith on the American continent to pass the stage of infancy and attain the status, and to assume the functions of, an independent existence within the World Bahá’í Community. I recall on this auspicious occasion with profound emotion the heroic services to the mother community of May Maxwell[1] whose life and death forged unbreakable links binding the body of the Canadian believers to the sister communities of the United States and Latin America. I am moved to appeal to assembled delegates to arise in conjunction with the first Canadian National Assembly, as a token of gratitude for the manifold blessings of Divine Providence, to initiate in the hour of the birth of their national activities a Five Year Plan designed to associate them, formally and systematically and independently, with their sister community of the United States, in the common task of the prosecution of their world-encompassing mission. The fulfillment of this collective task confronting the rapidly maturing community necessitates the incorporation of the Canadian National Assembly, the establishment of National Bahá’í Endowments, doubling the number of Local Assemblies throughout the Dominion and raising to one hundred the total number of localities where Bahá’ís reside throughout the Provinces, the constitution of a group in Newfoundland and the formation of a nucleus of the Faith in the Territory of Greenland, singled out for special mention by the Author of the Divine Plan, and the participation of Eskimos and Red Indians in membership to share administrative privileges in local institutions of the Faith in Canada. I fondly hope and ardently pray that the celebration of the first centenary of the Birth of Bahá’u’lláh’s prophetic mission will witness the triumphant consummation of the first historic Plan launched by the Canadian Bahá’í Community in a land whose future greatness and glory, both materially and spiritually, the Centre of Bahá’u’lláh’s Covenant twice emphatically proclaimed in His immortal Tablets.[2]
SHOGHI.