![]() ![]() The leaders of Bountiful insist that the reason for their arrests is not their wives but their faith. "But I think in the broader community, they are just our neighbors, and the attitude has been, We don't always agree with them, but they are people." "I think you have a smaller subsection of the community that is really offended by this notion of polygamy," says Lorne Eckersley, 54, publisher of the newspaper The Advance, based in the nearby town of Creston. But to many locals, the Blackmores are simply folks with whom they've lived, worked and done business for as long as anyone can remember. To the outside world, Bountiful may seem to be a titillating sect, a real-life version of the HBO series Big Love. "It's not a simple issue," admits Andy Alfoldy, 67, a local artist and curator of the Alfoldy Gallery, who has lived in the area since 1974. But more than anything else, the trial will test the mettle of a community that has wrestled with the thorny issue of Bountiful for more than 60 years. (According to tradition, the first wife is listed as a legal marriage, and the others are "celestial wives" recognized only within their faith.) The upcoming trial will test polygamy laws in the face of the Canadian Charter of Rights and its broad protection of the exercise of religion. According to press accounts, Blackmore is alleged to have as many as 26 wives and 108 children. 7, British Columbia Attorney General Wally Oppal ended speculation that the government intended to co-exist with Bountiful by ordering the arrest of settlement spiritual leaders Blackmore, 52, and James Oler, 44, under charges of polygamy. ( See pictures of two polygamist families.) for being an accomplice to rape, is facing charges in the aftermath of the raid on the polygamist Yearning for Zion Ranch in Eldorado. But this relationship, based on the country tenet "live and let live," grew increasingly uneasy over time as strange stories of life within the settlement leaked out and found their way into the media, with accounts of a power struggle between Winston Blackmore, the sect's leader in Bountiful, and Warren Jeffs, the leader of the FLDS Church. For generations, local farmers co-existed with the polygamists of Bountiful. Blackmore was part of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which was expelled from mainstream Mormonism in the 1930s. Made up of as many as 1,000 adherents of a fundamentalist Mormon sect, Bountiful has been home to clans of polygamists since the arrival in the late 1940s of the homestead's founder, Harold Blackmore, who according to one account was drawn to the valley after envisioning it in a dream. But recent generations have struggled with more complex secrets centered on a farming settlement in a corner of Lister known as Bountiful and paralleling the events that unfolded in Eldorado, Texas, in April 2008. In the beginning, of course, these secrets were the simple memories of the horrors of war. Founded by World War I veterans, Lister was always conspicuous for the dark secrets of many of its inhabitants. ![]() It lies roughly between Calgary and Spokane (the closest big town is Creston pop. border in southeastern British Columbia, Canada, in the shade of the Skimmerhorn Mountains. ![]() ![]() The main base for the sect is a small community on the Utah-Arizona border in the United States that is still run by the "prophet" and leader of the group, Warren Jeffs, from the Texas prison where he is serving a life sentence for sexually assaulting underage girls he considered brides.Follow farming community of Lister is located in a picturesque valley hard on the U.S. The community is largely self-sufficient for food and also runs a barter economy. Read more: Utah first state to declare porn a public health crisis Warren Jeffs was on the FBI's '"most-wanted" list Image: picture alliance/AP Photo/T.Nelsonīlackmore and Oler both live in the FLDS community of Bountiful, which was founded nearly 60 years ago in a mountainous area near the US border. A major factor in the split was the renunciation of polygamy by the mainstream Mormon church in the late 19th century. His lawyer has already said that Blackmore would challenge the constitutionality of Canada's polygamy law if found guilty.īoth men are senior figures in the FLDS, which broke away from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, also known as the Mormon church, in the early 20th century. The main defendant, Blackmore, has never denied his polygamy, saying it is an important part of his religion. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video ![]()
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