Aga Khan says Wynford park belongs to people

John Parker (Ward 26) says online he was talking to the Aga Khan IV on Friday (February  28, 2014) during the religious leader’s visit to Canada last week. Mr. Parker’s ward contains the nearly completed Wynford Drive cultural centre and park devoted to the history of the Ismaili Shia denomination of Islam. It is expected to open this year. The Aga Khan asked Parker to make sure that local people understood that this park was also their park. It was a pleasant democratic sentiment coming from this supreme religious leader. The Aga Khan is considered the infallible leader of Ismaili Shias, a body of people estimated at as many as 15 million. This is a fraction of the world’s Muslims but it seems an important one in the light of the civilized leadership and good work of the current Aga Khan. The family claims a direct relationship to Mohamed. The holder of this position however is much more familiar to non-Muslims as a cultivated and wealthy man of  many secular interests. He seems steeped in the finer qualities of Persian and Western culture. Whatever the truth,  the Aga Khan’s great work as a proponent of pluralism has earned him honourary Canadian citizenship. As such he addressed the combined Houses of Parliament in Ottawa last week and made some entertaining remarks about Olympic hockey. His ascension to the position he has held since 1957 occurred when his grandfather, Aga Khan III, decided to pass over his own sons and appoint his grandson Karim Al-Hussaini then 20-year-old student at Harvard as his successor.