page_title: Baháʼí Faith in North America
section_title: Canada
hierarchical_section_title: Baháʼí Faith in North America / Canada
caption_attribution_description: English: The entrance to the Bahá'í Shrine on rue des Pins, Montreal.
context_page_description: The Baháʼí Faith is a diverse and widespread religion founded by Baháʼu'lláh in the 19th century in Iran. Baháʼí sources usually estimate the worldwide Baháʼí population to be above 5 million. Most encyclopedias and similar sources estimate between 5 and 6 million Baháʼís in the world in the early 21st century. The religion is almost entirely contained in a single, organized, hierarchical community, but the Baháʼí population is spread out into almost every country and ethnicity in the world, being recognized as the second-most geographically widespread religion after Christianity. See Baháʼí statistics.
context_section_description: The Canada 2011 Census National Household Survey recorded 18,945 Baháʼís.  The Canadian Baháʼí Community, according to its official website consists of some 30,000 members across approximately 1200 communities throughout the 13 Canadian Provinces and Territories.  According to the same source, the Canadian community is quite diverse: "There are French-speaking and English-speaking Baháʼís, and more than 18% of Canadian Baháʼís come from First Nations and Inuit backgrounds; another 30% are recent immigrants or refugees."
  The Canadian community is one of the earliest western communities, at one point sharing a joint National Spiritual Assembly with the United States, and is a co-recipient of ʻAbdu'l-Bahá's Tablets of the Divine Plan.  The first North American woman to declare herself a Baháʼí was Mrs. Kate C. Ives, of Canadian ancestry, though not living in Canada at the time. Moojan Momen, in reviewing "The Origins of the Baháʼí Community of Canada, 1898–1948" notes that "the Magee family... are credited with bringing the Baháʼí Faith to Canada. Edith Magee became a Baháʼí in 1898 in Chicago and returned to her home in London, Ontario, where four other female members of her family became Baháʼís. This predominance of women converts became a feature of the Canadian Baháʼí community..."
  Statistics Canada reports 14,730 Baháʼís from 1991 census data and 18,020 in those of 2001. However the Association of Religion Data Archives (relying on World Christian Encyclopedia) estimated almost 46,600 Baháʼís in 2005. Some editions of the Canadian Baháʼí News are available.
caption: The Baháʼí Shrine in Montreal, being the house of May Maxwell and William Sutherland Maxwell, the only private home in Canada where ʻAbdu'l-Bahá stayed.[10]
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