The North Bay Muslim community celebrated the official opening of the city's first mosque with a ribbon cutting by Mayor Vic Fedeli Sunday.
The North Bay mosque, located at 423 McPhail Street, is a major step forward for the Muslim community in North Bay and has been under construction for the past year. Leaders in the Muslim community say they are extremely proud of this accomplishment in establishing the first mosque in the community of North Bay.
“Mayor Fedeli has demonstrated considerable insight in the future of multiculturalism, Immigration and openness or Religious practices and for the first time ever in the history of the City of North Bay all religions are now represented with a place of worship,” notes Kaneez Merali.
Below is the address Mayor Victor Fedeli made during the opening Sunday.
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It is indeed a great honour, and a great privilege to stand with you today to open the doors to our community’s first Mosque.
This is new ground for our community. I’m sure it makes people as curious as when the first Italian Catholic Church opened up on Douglas Street, or the first Synagogue opened up here 50 years ago.
But like other places of worship, Mosques exist for communal prayer. Inevitably, it will become a centre of community life; a place where people can come together and share ideas, aspirations, and feelings. I have seen the energy and vitality of this congregation over the years, whether at World Religion Day or the Eid dinner, and what a wonderful community it is.
I was born and raised in this city, and I went to a Catholic school. I thought I knew it all until I went to my wife’s Church for a wedding. I was probably 35 years old at the time. I looked around and said to my wife, “Where are the confessionals?” She fell apart laughing. Later, she explained to me that Catholics are they only faith that receive absolution; her team has to live with their sins. Then she said, “I thought you told me you studied world religion.” Then it dawned on me … to the priests that taught me for 5 years, world religion meant studying Catholicism in China, Catholicism in South Africa, Catholicism in the Middle East, and so on!
So here we are at the opening of our community’s Mosque. But we’re not just opening doors today … we’re opening minds. I am looking forward to learning from our friends; for an insight into how Muslims live in this country, what their day-to-day lives entail, and what kind of practices they have. We all want to know these things, because knowledge is the key to understanding. And understanding is the key to peace.
Please let me finish by congratulating everyone involved for all that you are doing. This is a great leap of faith, a faith that we are all looking forward to learning more about. And I shall continue to take the closest personal interest in this exciting step.
