Lida Berghuis was born in Iran and immigrated with her family to Canada when she was fourteen. Since then she has lived in three provinces of Canada, the US and the Netherlands. She is very interested in the intersection of cultures and what we can learn from each other. She is a Teacher of English as a Second Language and has met new immigrants from many countries in her classes over the years. She lives in Montreal with her husband and family and is the mother of three children.
Merryl Hammond PhD studied nursing and community health in South Africa and - escaping apartheid - immigrated to Montreal, Canada in 1988. She's a public health consultant for Indigenous clients and has published widely in both countries. She was struck with bipolar disorder at age 51 and flipped from researcher and health worker to locked-ward patient.
In "Mad Like Me: Travels in Bipolar Country" she discloses - in vivid and illuminating detail - what she and her family confronted on their unplanned journey deep into "bipolar country" and ultimately to recovery. This memoir fights the stigma of mental illness and gives readers sincere cause for hope.
Heather Niderost was born in Montreal, Canada, received her B.A. from McGill University, Dip. Ed from Aberdeen University (Scotland), and later her M.A. in Religious Studies from McGill. As a long-time member of the Baha’i Faith, her life has been devoted to the spiritual education of children, youth and adults. Her three books, ‘The Light World’, ‘A Pilgrim’s Song’, and finally ‘The Quest of the Light Knights’ illustrate this personal quest. Sharing her profound belief in the Baha’i view of humanity’s noble future has been her constant source of inspiration.
Dr. Abdu’l-Missagh Ghadirian is an author, researcher and Emeritus Professor at McGill University, Faculty of Medicine in Montreal. He has spoken in numerous public, professional and university venues around the world.
He has done extensive research including about 170 articles published mostly in scientific journals and other professional media in the field of social science and psychiatry. He is the author of fourteen books, including “In Search of Nirvana”, “Ageing: Challenges and Opportunities”, “Environment and Psychopathology” and “Alcohol and Drug Abuse: a Psychosocial and Spiritual Approach to Prevention”.
In recent years he has published the books “Creative Dimensions of Suffering” 2009,“Steadfastness in the Covenant” 2014, “Alzheimer’s Disease: An Eclipse before Sunset (2ndedition) 2016” and “Materialism – Moral and Social Consequences (2010 & second edition 2017). The latter received the Distinguished Scholarship Award from the Association for Baha’i Studies in 2011. Some of his works have been translated and published in several languages..
He founded and has conducted a course on Spirituality and Ethics in Medicine (since 2002) at McGill University’s Medical Education department. He also taught as one of the distance professors around the world for the Baha’i Institute for Higher Education (BIHE-Iran) from 2006-2012.
As a Baha’i, he has researched and published on spirituality in medicine and the application of Baha’i principles to current societal problems as well as on the persecution of the Baha’is of Iran. He served as a member of the Continental Board of Counsellors in the Americas (1995-2005) and as a member of the Board of Trustees of Huququ’llah in Canada (2005-2017).
www.medicineandspirituality.com