1953: A big-little year

“The Queen of Carmel is now enthroned on God's Mountain, crowned in glowing gold, robed in shimmering white, girdled in emerald green, enchanting every eye from air, sea, plain and hill.” It was in these words1 that Shoghi Effendi, the then leader of the Bahá'í community, announced the completion of the construction of this Bahá'í holy place, the shrine of the Báb, in a joyous cablegram to a Baha'i conference being held from 7 to 15 October 1953 in New Delhi, India

This message came as a triumphant climax to a holy year marking the centenary of the birth of the mission of Bahá'u'lláh in 1852. The announcement also came at the earliest stage of a ten year plan to spread the Baha'i teachings throughout the world, a plan which Baha’is refer to as the ninth stage in the history of the planet.

In that same year, in April 1953, James Watson and Francis Crick published their article entitled “A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid.”2 This was a pivotal moment in modern scientific history. In 1962, the year I began my pioneering life in the Canadian Bahá'í community, these two men received the Nobel Prize.-Ron Price with thanks to: 1Bahá'í World News Service, “Golden Anniversary of the Queen of Carmel,” 12 October 2003; and 2“Linus Pauling and the Race for DNA: A Documentary History,” WGBH/PBS Online, 1998.

Grade three was not a good year
for me-9/’52 to 6/53-could have
skipped a grade, but missed out
by a hair; grade 4 was far better,
went to Mrs Jones’ class at East
Burlington Primary School just..
fiftyish yards from Lake Ontario:
also collected autumn’s chestnuts,
summer’s pop-bottles, played field
hockey, baseball, started going to
Bahá'í firesides with my mother at
John and Hattie Dixon’s-had apple
pie and cheesecake on those cold
winter evenings in Canada and while
this was going on back then-DNA was
discovered and the Baha’is finished the
Báb’s shrine in Haifa--all unbeknownst
to me for I was only eight and nine and
on my way to late childhood(9 to 12) &
adolescence(13 to 19) so, so long ago...

Ron Price
25 July 2009