The First Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has set a Saturday, April 26, groundbreaking date for the Lethbridge Alberta Temple — one of four houses of the Lord in the province of Alberta and one of 11 total in Canada.
Elder Randall K. Bennett, a General Authority Seventy and president of the Church’s North America Central Area, will preside at the groundbreaking services. Elder Bennett is a native of Magrath, Alberta, which is located 20 miles (32 kilometers) south of Lethbridge.
President Russell M. Nelson announced a house of the Lord for Lethbridge, Alberta, in April 2023 general conference. The temple’s site location — at the corner of Whoop Up Drive West and Mauretania Road in Lethbridge — was released on Sept. 5, 2023, and the exterior rendering was published on April 29, 2024.
Plans call for a multistory temple of approximately 45,000 square feet and an accompanying distribution center.
The groundbreaking date was first published Tuesday, Feb. 18, on ChurchofJesusChrist.org.
In October 2024, preliminary work — including grading and clearing the property and doing initial utility work — began at the nine-acre temple grounds.
City approvals allowed the Church to begin preparatory work on the property, with the preliminary utility and grading work including running electricity to the site and installing water and sewer lines. Also, Mauretania Road was in need of repairs where connections were made to the city’s underground utilities, and workers removed excess soil from the site.
The Church has a total of 11 houses of the Lord in Canada, The Lethbridge temple will be the fourth in the province of Alberta, joining dedicated temples in Cardston, Calgary and Edmonton. Other dedicated temples are in Halifax, Nova Scotia; Montreal, Quebec; Regina, Saskatchewan; Toronto, Ontario; Vancouver, British Columbia; and Winnipeg, Manitoba. A temple is in planning for Victoria, British Columbia.
Dedicated more than 100 years ago in August 1923, the Cardston Alberta Temple was the first in Canada and the Church’s sixth overall. It was the first temple constructed outside of the United States and its territories; the Laie Hawaii Temple was dedicated in 1919, when the islands were a U.S. territory.
The Toronto Ontario Temple, which was recently renovated, will be rededicated on Sunday, March 23, by President Jeffrey R. Holland, acting president of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.
The gospel was first preached in Canada when Joseph Smith Sr. and Don Carlos Smith, the father and brother of the Prophet Joseph Smith, crossed the U.S. border and went to several towns in eastern Canada in September 1830. Over the next two decades, some 2,500 Canadians were converted.
The first known Latter-day Saints to enter what is now the province of Alberta were a father and son — Simeon F. Allen and Heber S. Allen, of Hyrum, Utah —who contracted work in 1883 on the Canadian Pacific Railroad between Medicine Hat and Calgary. Other Saints from Utah working on the contract soon joined them.
In 1886, Church President John Taylor gave permission to Cache Stake President Charles O. Card to investigate colonizing opportunities in southwestern Canada. Cardston was later settled by Latter-day Saints, in 1887.
Today, more than 203,000 Latter-day Saints comprising nearly 490 congregations call Canada home, with nearly 85,000 Church members in more than 230 congregations residing in Alberta.
