JIM LOFT WOULD NEVER MEET ‘ABDU’L-BAHÁ PERSONALLY, nor would he
play a role in ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s travels across North America in
1912. Yet Jim would experience, and recount throughout his life,
one of the unique tales about that historic journey. On the
afternoon of September 9, 1912, four-year-old James Loft — or
“Jim” as he liked to be called — sat on a fence just outside of
Oshawa, Ontario, alongside the railroad tracks. Five hours
earlier, a train had left Montreal, beginning its fourteen-hour
journey to Buffalo. It had stopped in Brockville near the
Thousand Islands about 10:30 a.m., and was now making its way
west across the north side of Lake Ontario. At about 3:30 p.m.
near the town of Oshawa, Jim watched the train hurtle by.
Through one of its windows he saw something that so overwhelmed
him that he fell backwards off the fence and onto the grass
below. He described what he saw as “a man wearing a long flowing
white robe waving from the train.” Later in life he would
explain that this was his earliest s