This is my favourite picture from the recent Festival of the Covenant, a gathering which welcomed Baha'is from all over Québec to Gatineau. 'Abdu'l-Missagh Ghadirian and his wife Marilyn are friends of my parents and they had not seen one another in many years. I had seen Dr. Ghadirian more recently, and am always interested to hear news of his son, Nayyer, whom I taught at Maxwell International Baha'i School in the '90s, but it was a particular pleasure to see, albeit briefly, the pleasure in these old friends meeting one another.

I continue to reflect a lot about history. When I was at Maxwell, I spoke to the student body and assembled staff at the morning assembly in their dining hall, at the invitation of Deloria Bighorn. This was to promote my book, but it was also an opportunity for me to reflect a little on the past. One of my former colleagues used to comment that we had no "institutional memory" and I have thought about this remark. It's the old idea, "if these walls could talk", I guess...translated into the current reality. The students were 'the same'. No, of course they were new individuals, and some of the teachers there actually were the same because one, at least, has been there since the inception of the school (!) but despite the change of faces, changing times, there is something about the ethos of any institution which remembers...and yet memory is seated only in the people who have been there, who have gone before. Much is lost, as people come and go, because there is nothing permanent to mark their presence, not so much as a gallery of photographs. It seems to me that having a 'rogue's gallery' of sorts provides a sense of history: a room, or hallway, dedicated to pictures of those whose lives have changed, or have been changed, by being present there. Yearbooks get lost, photos grow old, but framed on a wall they give a sense of the institution. There is no trace, now, of the man who made the statement (Dale Robertson). He has gone on to change his name (Hero Vey) and apparently runs a B&B at Tofino with his new wife. But he was at Maxwell for years, and his legacy, particularly in the Dramatic Arts, was rich. I chatted a bit with the librarian, Leola Witt-McNie, now in a better venue. She has surrounded herself with memorabilia, because I think she understands the importance of a sense of continuity. The loss of memory, personal or institutional, means loss of access to important archives, to history, to all that was good and all that was meaningful, except in the capricious minds and hearts of its participants. I would have liked to see, as you enter the office, a gallery of Principals and Vice-Principals, past and present, so that Dr. Ray Johnson, Dr. Kurt Hein, Arini Beaumaris, Dr. Stephen Waite, June Barrow...the list is longer...are not "lost" to the memory of the place they helped to build. My friends, Mark Miller, Lisa Brosseau, Dale Robertson, the Naderis, the Heins, the Varners, the Zahrais, the Johnsons, even Jacob Bighorn, aren't there anymore...and many more besides...but they are present in the spiritual realm, and there should be, could be, some small place to mark their passing there.

I think this is why I am making books that hold memories, this desire to leave a marker, not only for myself, but for those whose place resides in text. Someday, someone will pick up Partners in Spirit, and they will recall its people, and get a glimpse of the idea of the infancy of Baha'i marriage. Someday, someone will pick up A Warm Place in My Heart, and they will read about Olinga Martel, or Kai Bighorn, or Anisa Qualls, in their own words written when they were young. Perhaps they will be old by then themselves, but in text, they will have memory, they will be there to be accessed again and again...I hadn't realized this until my friend, Deirdre Jackson Farr, commented that these books would be of great interest to the historians and archivists of the future. She remarked, "Imagine if you could read stories written in first person by the early Christian believers," and I thought of the residual power, still, of Biblical lore. Current novelists reconstruct, through imagination and some glimpse of the historical record, ideas of 'how it might have been'. Anita Diamant's The Red Tent, told entirely from the point of view of Dinah, comes to mind as a wonderful example of this genre of storytelling, or Marion Zimmer Bradley's astonishing Arthurian epic, viewed from the perspective of Morgan, The Mists of Avalon. Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant.

So I like the sense of history, in the picture above, and I like the feeling, much as I also grieve anticipated losses, that in fifty years, someone will look at these pictures and they will remember, and think of how it was, once upon a time not so very long ago. My great-grandchildren will be able to access stories, of Ron and Edna Nablo, servants of Baha'u'llah, and their many friends and family members. Even as a type, one of these is on the way to being born: my nephew Evan and his wife Amanda are due to have a baby in the next month or two. The life cycle continues, as Evan's grandmother, Joan Doran, prepares to leave this world as her cancer advances. She and Bob have had almost sixty years together. We are preparing to say goodbye, and we are preparing to say hello. They are both, in their way, lump-in-the-throat and tear-in-my-eyes reflections, and if this writing life means anything, perhaps today, in sharing them with you, I offer a chance for remembrance.