Sunday, May 4, 2 p.m. Eastern time
Listen to the audio recording (Podcast)
The presentation will be based on the unpublished manuscript, Winnifred Harvey and the Beginnings of the Bahá’í Faith in Ottawa. Winnifred (1911-1990), was a well-known Canadian Bahá’í teacher and administrator who was the first Bahá’í in Ottawa and by her count the hundredth Bahá’í in Canada. With Winnifred we experience many firsts of the Canadian Bahá’í community in the mid-1900s such as the first summer schools, first Spiritual Assemblies, the first National Convention, the first outreach to communities outside Ottawa, the beginnings of French-Canadian teaching and Canada’s response to the Ten-Year Crusade.
We accompany Winnifred on her pilgrimage in 1956, where she met the Guardian, and to his funeral in London just a year later. There are also stories of her teaching trips across Canada (including the North), Scandinavia, Nigeria and Europe. We also meet her co-workers such as Roger White, Rosemary and Emeric Sala, Rowland Estall, and Hands of the Cause Siegfried Schopflocher and John Robarts. The last 20 years of her life, until her death, she served the Bahá’í Faith at the World Centre in Haifa, where she is buried.
Winnifred left a rich archive. Her handwritten account of her pilgrimage alone is close to 80 pages long. The book is based on the five boxes of her papers left to the Canadian Bahá’í Archive, files in the Ottawa Bahá’í Archives, papers in the U.S. Bahá’í archives, the box of her papers sent to me from the Bahá’í World Centre, letters of friends and family, scrapbooks, and about 15 interviews.
The Ottawa Bahá’í community is now one of the most successful in North America and I thought that it was important to chronicle its beginnings as Winnifred was so instrumental in its founding. And, as her niece, it was hard to resist this project.
Heather Harvey is a native of Montreal, Quebec, where she enrolled in the Baha’i Faith 50 years ago. She has lived in the Ottawa, Ontario area since 1990. She has a bachelor’s degree in Psychology and a master’s in Education from McGill University and taught at the elementary (public school) level for over 30 years in the Montreal area, in Northern Quebec and in Ottawa. Upon retirement, she served as the manager of the very busy Ottawa Baha’i Centre and Book Store for 11 years. Heather is an active Baha’i, having served on several Spiritual Assemblies and committees, as a children’s class teacher and on the board of the Rideau Ottawa Bahá’í Schools Initiative (ROBSI). She has had a keen interest in genealogy, history, and the history of the Baha’i Faith, for many years. These two interests merged when she began to research the history of her aunt, Winnifred Harvey. Winnifred Harvey and the Beginnings of the Bahá’í Faith in Ottawa is Heather’s first book, which took about 10 years to research and write. She has also written several short articles on local history and Bahá’í history. Now retired, she is able to devote time to various areas of Baha’i service and interests, including Big Ideas (an online speakers’ series), the Ottawa Archives Committee, the Ottawa Cluster Environmental Group, ROBSI and Writelife, a Bahá’í writers’ group. She has sung with the Ottawa-Carleton Choristers for 30 years and is on the executive of the tenants’ association where she lives. Heather is the mother of three lovely adult children and grandmother of two. She was married to the late Jim Desson for 45 years.
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