Vancouver: The Master at the Border

Among the Pacific-coast entries in Mahmúd's Diary is the brief record of a particular reception arranged in Seattle in October 1912 to which a small delegation of believers from British Columbia had travelled south.

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The Vancouver and Victoria believers, in 1912, numbered perhaps fifteen souls in total. They were small, scattered, and as yet without a stable Local Spiritual Assembly. They had heard of the Master's western tour and had written to ask whether He might come north into Canada. The northern leg had not been included in His itinerary, and the prospect of adding it was ruled out by the schedule. The friends accepted the answer and proposed instead that they themselves come south.

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A delegation of seven travelled by the steamboat down the Pacific coast and across the international border. They reached Seattle on the morning of the Master's arrival and arranged, through the Seattle friends, to be received in the parlour of the hotel where the Master was lodging. The Master agreed and set aside an afternoon for them.

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Mahmúd records that the meeting was particular. The Master addressed the Vancouver friends not as a remote outpost but as *the friends in Canada* — naming, by the term, their distinct national identity within the larger Bahá'í community of the American hemisphere. He told them that *the hearts of the friends in Canada are dear to Me,* and that He had been following, by correspondence with the friends in Montreal and through the small reports sent up from Seattle, the slow progress of the Faith in the western Canadian provinces.

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He spoke specifically of Vancouver's geography. The city, He noted, was the western terminus of the great Canadian railway that ran across the continent. As the Pacific gateway of Canada, Vancouver bore — in the spiritual order — the same relation to the Canadian east that San Francisco bore to the American east. The friends present, He suggested, were the beginning of a Bahá'í community that would in time take its distinct place among the western Pacific cities.

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Each member of the delegation was addressed individually. The Master enquired of each one's family circumstances, their work, the small acts of service they had been undertaking. Several were given particular instructions — one asked to take on a specific teaching duty, another to write more frequently to a younger believer she had been neglecting.

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The afternoon closed with refreshments and a final word of blessing. The Vancouver delegation returned by steamboat north the following morning. The Master had not visited Canadian soil; the Canadian friends had carried Canadian soil into the Master's presence.

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*Paraphrased from Mahmúd's Diary: The Diary of Mírzá Maḥmúd-i-Zarqání (George Ronald, 1998), entry for the Vancouver delegation in Seattle, October 1912; see original for full text.*

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