Joseph Smith started the Mormon religion in New York in 1830. The Mormon people who came to Canada’s west not only wanted land to build houses and churches on, but the freedom to practice their religion without being bothered by the government. The Mormon religion was having problems with the government of the United States because they practiced something called “polygamy”. This means that a man could have more than one wife at a time. A Mormon named Charles Ora Card arrived in Alberta in 1886, with some followers, and built the first Mormon community in the southern part of the province. The town is now named Cardston and it is located south of Lethbridge.
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