Canada’s problem with polygamy

MENTION polygamy in Canada and what might come to mind is Bountiful, a suitably named town in British Columbia. It is home to Canada’s best-known polygamist, Winston Blackmore, who has an estimated 148 children. He and James Oler, a fellow adherent of a fundamentalist splinter sect of the Mormon church, practised “plural marriage” for decades until a court found them guilty in July of the crime of polygamy. (Their appeal will be heard on December 12th.)

It was the first conviction for more than a century under a law from 1892 that aimed to stop American polygamists (many of them Mormons irked by their church’s renunciation of polygamy in 1890) from practising in Canada. Authorities had been wary of laying such charges for fear of a constitutional challenge. That obstacle was removed in 2011 when the Supreme Court in British Columbia found freedom of religion could not be used to justify actions that harmed...Continue reading