Edith Magee

Edith Magee (1880-1971) from a prominent family in London, Ontario, was the first Canadian to declare her belief in Bahá’u’lláh, in 1898 when she was seventeen years old. In September 1893, when Edith was seventeen, along with her sister, Harriet, and their mother, Esther Anne, she attended the World's Parliament of Religions in Chicago, an event that her maternal uncle—the Chicago-based journalist, Guy Magee—had covered. Moojan Momen, in the 1998 review of Canadian sociologist, Will Van den Hoonaard's 1996 book, The Origins of the Bahá'í Community of Canada, 1898-1948, wrote that the "four other female members of her family became Bahá’ís, and that the Magee family "are credited with bringing the Bahá’í Faith to Canada." Momen, citing van den Hoonaard, noted that, "This predominance of women converts became a feature of the Canadian Bahá’í community".

According to historian, Robert H. Stockman, Guy Magee had introduced Edith McGee to the Bahá’í Faith in 1898 following an interview with a Bahá’í. This was the final year of Ibrahim Kheiralla's courses on the Bahá’í Faith in Chicago.