Douglas MARTIN

1927 - 2020

DOUGLAS MARTIN 1927 - 2020 Douglas Martin passed away at the Hazelton Place Retirement Residence on September 28, 2020, at the age of 93. Elizabeth, his wife, passed away in 1999. He leaves no children, and his only close family, a sister, predeceased him. He leaves an enormous family of loving friends throughout Canada and the world, along with several generations of those who will, with grieving hearts, not long forget him and the impact he had on their lives. In 1993, he was elected to the nine-member supreme governing council of the worldwide Bahá'í community, the Universal House of Justice, serving until his retirement in 2005. Douglas Martin was born February 24, 1927, and raised in Chatham, Ontario. He obtained a Bachelor's degree in business from the University of Western Ontario, worked in advertising and public relations, but later turned to studies in history, receiving a Masters degree in history from the University of Waterloo. In 1953 Mr. Martin became a member of the Bahá'í community, embracing the Bahá'í principle of the oneness of humanity, and principles of the equality of women and men and the harmony of science and religion. In 1960 he was elected to the national governing council, the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá'ís of Canada, serving until 1985, often as general secretary. He was instrumental in establishing with the Canadian government a Bahá'í refugee program, providing protection to several thousand Iranian Bahá'ís who came to Canada after the 1979 Iranian revolution that led to violent persecution of Iran's Bahá'ís, persecution which continues. He was a founding member of the Association for Bahá'í Studies, co-authored, with Dr. William Hatcher, "The Bahá'í Faith: The Emerging Global Religion," (Harper & Row), published articles and scholarly monographs and lectured widely on the Bahá'í Faith. In 1985, he began serving as the Director-General of the Bahá'í International Office of Public Information at the Bahá'í World Centre in Haifa, Israel. He served as the editor-in-chief of "One Country," a Bahá'í international news magazine, and "The Bahá'í World," a series of annual reference volumes. After his service on the Bahá'í Universal House of Justice, 1993 to 2005, he returned to Canada.