Quebec college features the Bahá’í Faith

A choir sings as part of a presentation for Religious Studies Days at a Quebec college.
Photo: Robert Laliberté

In mid-November, Cégep Sainte-Foy, a college in Quebec City, Que. featured the Bahá’í Faith during the annual Religious Studies Days, a week-long cultural and educational event which has been running at the school for the past 12 years.

The event included presentations on the Holy Writings of the Bahá’í Faith, life after death, and efforts to end racism and presentations were given by experts in the field of religious studies like Alain Bouchard, a professor at Cégep Sainte-Foy and Laval University, and Claude Lizotte, who teaches comparative religious history.

The school displayed a large lighted model of the Bahá’í Temple in Wilmette, near Chicago, U.S., and a mural on the theme of ‘‘Unity of peoples and religions’’ created by students of the Cégep in collaboration with Nancy Campbell Collegiate Institute, an educational institution inspired by the Bahá’í teachings. Approximately ten students from Nancy Campbell participated in the event.

To conclude the program, all were invited to attend a celebration, which began with a meal and was followed by musical performances, including one by a Bahá’í choir whose members come from from different regions of Quebec.

Given the scope and quality of the program, the high degree of professionalism demonstrated by the organizers, the centrality of the arts and the enthusiastic participation of the students, the event was unprecedented in the history of the Bahá’í community of Canada, according to the Bahá’í who participated in it.