Polygamy past and present

Canada is on the cusp of either legalizing polygamy or strengthening the 120-year prohibition against multiple marriage.

The reference case was initiated by B.C. attorney general Mike de Jong to finally get a clear legal lens through which to examine the fundamentalist Mormon community of Bountiful in southeastern British Columbia.

Global News takes a look at the closed polygamous community in Bountiful.

1946 – Harold Blackmore (Winston Blackmore’s uncle) buys property in Lister, B.C. and what will later become known as Bountiful. Blackmore moves there with his wife and children and a few months later, marries a second wife in a "celestial marriage" in Utah. His second wife is his first wife’s sister.

Aug. 25, 1978 -Alberta Provincial Court Judge Litsky rules that "Canada has not yet accepted the plural wife principle" in a child custody case involving members of a fundamentalist Mormon group called the Alpha and Omega Order of Melchizedik, G.E.O.M.

August 1984 -Winston Blackmore is sworn in as the Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints bishop for Bountiful.

1986 – President of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints LeRoy Johnson dies and is succeeded by Rulon Jeffs. Canadian Winston Blackmore is named trustee.

1990 – The RCMP launches an investigation into the activity at Bountiful, B.C.

October 1991 -RCMP conclude a 13-month investigation and recommend charges be laid against Bountiful’s bishop Winston Blackmore and its patriarch Dalmon Oler.

June 1992- B.C. Attorney General Colin Gabelman rejects the RCMP’s recommendations after receiving legal opinions suggesting that the Criminal Code’s polygamy section breaches the Constitution’s guarantee of religious freedom.

2002 – FLDS leader Rulon Jeffs removes Winston Blackmore as a trustee of the United Effort Plan, a group which manages the affairs of the FLDS.

Sept. 8, 2002 – FLDS prophet Rulon Jeffs dies and is succeeded by his son, Warren Jeffs. The new prophet declares Winston Blackmore an apostate and appoints James Oler, Dalmon’s son, bishop of Bountiful.

Sept. 2003 – The community of Bountiful is split between Winston Blackmore followers and Warren Jeffs followers after Blackmore is ex-communicated and his children forced out of the elementary/secondary school at Bountiful.

A B.C. Supreme Court decision ends Blackmore’s control of the school at Bountiful, and ends the $700,000 in education grants from the B.C. Ministry of Education.

Blackmore creates the Mormon Hills School, and receives $363,000 in government grants.

June 14, 2004 – B.C. Attorney General Geoff Plant announces another RCMP investigation into allegations of child abuse, exploitation and forcible marriage at Bountiful.

July 20, 2004 -B.C. Civil Liberties Association calls for a full public investigation into every aspect of Bountiful but with particular emphasis on sexual exploitation and abuse and allegations that racism is being taught in the schools. BCLA maintains its longheld view that the polygamy law would not withstand a constitutional challenge, adding that, "The question of polygamy is an unhelpful diversion from the other allegations at hand."

April 2005 – Winston Blackmore holds a polygamy summit in Creston and admits to having married "several under-aged girls."

The same month, 15 of Blackmore’s wives attend a conference in Winnipeg discussing sexual abuse in isolated communities. They urge the government to raise the age of sexual consent from 14 to 16.

June 2005 – FLDS prophet Warren Jeffs becomes a fugitive after he and seven other FLDS elders are indicted an Arizona grand jury along with seven others on various charges of sexual conduct with minors.

Nov. 2005 – One of Blackmore’s wives, Edith Barlow, is ordered out of the country. Barlow, who has been living in Canada with a visitor’s visa during her ten-year marriage to Blackmore, applies for permanent residency.

Her application is rejected. Immigration Canada says a man cannot sponsor more than one wife for residency.

May 5, 2006 – The FBI puts Warren Jeffs on its 10 Most Wanted list.

August 25, 2006 -Warren Jeffs is arrested outside Las Vegas and sent to Purgatory Correctional Center in Utah.

Dec. 8, 2006 – Winston Blackmore appears on CNN’s Larry King Live and admits to marrying several under-aged girls.

November 2007 – Warren Jeffs is found guilty of being an accomplice to the rape of 14-year-old Elissa Wall, who he forced to marry her 19-year-old, first cousin.

April 2008 – Texas authorities raid a compound near Eldorado, where the FLDS had built a temple that is similar to the LDS tabernacle in Salt Lake City. The women and 416 children found at the Yearning for Zion ranch are forced on to buses and taken by child protection authorities. The Texas Supreme Court eventually rules that the children were wrongly taken from their families and orders them to be returned. But evidence collected during the raid eventually results in charges against 13 men including Warren Jeffs.

January 2009 – Winston Blackmore and James Oler are arrested. Each is charged with one count of polygamy. Blackmore’s indictment lists 19 "wives", nine of whom were under 18; Oler’s lists two.

September 2009 – The indictments against Blackmore and Oler are quashed by a B.C. Supreme Court judge who ruled that former attorney-general Wally Oppal acted improperly by asking more than one special prosecutor to offer advice on how to proceed on the polygamy file. The first special prosecutor recommended a constitutional reference case; the second, recommended charging Blackmore and Oler.

October 2009 – B.C. Attorney-General Mike de Jong files a constitutional reference case in B.C. Supreme Court. He asks the court to rule on two questions: 1) Is the Criminal Code’s polygamy section consistent with the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms? If not, in what particular or particulars and to what extent?

2) What are the necessary elements of the polygamy offense in the Criminal Code? Does the law require that the polygamous conjugal union involved a minor or occurred in a context of dependence, exploitation, abuse of authority, a gross imbalance of power or undue influence?

December 2009 – Chief Justice Robert Bauman of the B.C. Supreme Court appoints Vancouver lawyer George Macintosh as the "amicus" to make the case that the polygamy law is unconstitutional. The amicus – whose bills will be paid by the B.C. government – along with intervenors such as the FLDS and the Canadian Polyamory Advocacy Association will go up against the combined forces of the attorneys general of B.C. and Canada.

July 2010 – FLDS prophet Warren Jeffs’s conviction on two counts of being an accomplice to rape are overturned by the Utah Supreme Court and a new trial is ordered.

September 2010 – Texas files extradition papers in Utah for Warren Jeffs, who is charged there with aggravated sexual assault, sexual assault and bigamy, which could result in at least one life sentence. Jeffs refuses to waive his right to a hearing.

November 2010 – B.C. Supreme Court Chief Justice Robert Bauman will begin hearing the constitutional reference case in Vancouver. The trial is expected to last until the end of January.

Warren Jeffs’s extradition hearing is scheduled in a Salt Lake City courtroom.