Moving to Cardston, Alberta, Canada

The town of Cardston was the first of what would become several Mormon settlements in Southern Alberta, Canada. Its colonizer, Charles O. Card, came seeking refuge from prosecution in the U.S. due to his practice of plural marriage. On President John Taylor's advice, he went first to British Columbia in search of friendlier territory. There, he found nothing available that was to his liking. Hearing from a mountaineer of the “buffalo plains” of Alberta, he reportedly said to his traveling companions, “If the buffalo can live there, we can. Let us go and see it.”

In late October 1886, Charles selected the site of the future town of Cardston at Lee’s Creek, and by late the next spring his wife Zina (daughter of Brigham Young) and several other families had arrived at the new settlement. Charles set to work building the town that would soon bear his name, establishing a Sunday School within a few weeks and opening a general store.

During its first few years, Cardston’s population grew gradually as other polygamist families sought refuge in Canada. By the time the LDS practice of plural marriage officially ended in 1890, land shortages in Utah and Idaho were driving young farmers north to seek a living in Alberta, where a $10 entry fee and cultivation of the land was enough to secure a homestead.1

In 1893 the William Orlando Bigelow family and other residents of Millville, Utah began considering moving to the new settlement in Canada.

This is what their daughter Guinevere Bigelow Heninger said about it:

We left Millville in the month of May; at least Dad and Orson did. Mother and the three younger children left about two weeks later on the train traveling to Pocatello, where Dad had purchased a very nice fringe topped buggy for Mother.

Cardston, Alberta 1904

We landed at Cardston in July 1893. Cardston was six years old. There was a two-room log house partly built in the west part of town; about three blocks west of the main street. Dad acquired this house and straight way traveled to Lethbridge to get shingles, windows and doors. This was the first house in Cardston to have a shingled roof. Dad said he wasn’t going to have milk pans sitting around to catch the drips.

Father acquired a homestead site on the Saint Mary’s river just across from the Indian Reserve. It was a lovely piece of land.

The Indians came to our place a lot. Mother was very kind to them. She gave them many gallon of skim milk and Father always gave them parts of the beef he killed in the fall.



1. https://history.lds.org/place/cardston-alberta-canada