The odd and unusual Lethbridge Bylaws

LETHBRIDGE-After the Town of Taber passed a bylaw that some find outrageous, Global News decided to do a little digging into some of the more unique bylaws in Lethbridge.

When it comes to Lethbridge history, there is no better person to break it down than Belinda Crowson with the Galt Museum and Archives.

“Under the bicycle bylaw you have to have a license for your bicycle, and so that bicycle license has to be on the bike and it has to have your name and address and the make and model, and by the bylaw you must have it.  We don’t sell it anymore.”

If you look close enough there’s a bylaw for almost everything, from bikes to birds.

“If you have a racing pigeon, it can be left out for three hours a day so it can be exercised, and then it has to be back in its coop.”

Laugh if you will, but pigeon racing clubs used to be a big draw.  The clubs have long since flown the coop, but the bylaw remains nested in the books.

“Some of those have practical historical origins, but now it just seems weird.”

It’s not just the pigeons on a tight timeline – teens should also take notice if out too late.

“It is bylaw 12-25, and by that bylaw kids under 14, so kids 15 and under, must be off the street by 9:15 p.m unless they are with guardians.  I’ve never heard of an enforcement of that bylaw though.”

For all the whacky rules still in play today, Crowson says it could have been worse.

“What they actually did was start over. Between 1891 and 1907 we had about 250 bylaws, and in 1908, what they did was keep 16 of those bylaws and threw the rest out.”

Because of those changes, you can now freely ride your bike through a cemetery, and you don’t have to worry about catching a mare and stallion in the act.  Still – there are six thousand bylaws in the city, some enforced more stringently than others.