Charles Ora Card

Charles Ora Card (November 5, 1839 – September 9, 1906) was the American founder of Cardston, Alberta, the first Mormon settlement in Canada. He has been referred to as "Canada's Brigham Young". Card was a Mormon pioneer as a teenager, traveling from the eastern United States to Utah Territory in the 1850s. After arriving in Utah, he supervised the construction of the Logan Utah Temple, served as a city councilman, and was appointed to the first board of trustees of Brigham Young College. Card was then tasked by leaders in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) to travel north to Canada and establish a Latter-day Saint colony there. He worked to make the community self-sufficient, participating in irrigation projects. Card was a practitioner of plural marriage, marrying a total of four wives and having sixteen children. He served in leadership positions within the LDS Church, mainly as stake president. He was the spiritual and economic leader of Cardston.

Early life Card was born in Ossian, New York, to Cyrus Williams Card and Sarah Ann Tuttle. In 1846, the family moved to St. Joseph County, Michigan, and later returned to New York. Card and his parents joined the LDS Church in 1856, and that same year the family set out to join the body of Latter-day Saints in Utah Territory. Together they crossed the plains in one of the Mormon pioneer handcart companies. Sixteen-year-old Card assisted by standing guard, hunting buffalo, and carrying women and children across rivers. Once they arrived, the Card family settled first in Farmington, Utah, and later moved to Logan in 1860. There, Card built a log cabin for his family. He attended school in Ogden. He also worked at his father's sawmill and small farm.

Career He worked as a teacher at the Sabbath Schools in Cache Valley, and later became the superintendent over schools in Logan. Card was a coroner, road commissioner, and justice of the peace in Cache Valley. He also served as a city councilman for sixteen years, beginning in 1866; Such infrastructure included irrigation for multiple Utah towns, on which he worked for fifteen years as "irrigation canal company director." He was in charge of five mills during the same time period. His involvement in education continued as a member of the first board of trustees of Brigham Young College. Church president John Taylor instructed him to find "asylum and justice" in the north. Card took his wife, Zina Williams Card, and left for the North-West Territories of Canada in 1886, successfully escaping arrest. Travelling with twelve other families from Cache Valley, he founded Cardston, North-West Territories, Canada (in present-day Alberta), on June 3, 1887, at what was then called Lee's Creek encampment. Regardless, the population of Mormon immigrants in Cardston and its surrounding areas continued to flourish. In 1889, Card returned to Utah to give an account of Cardston's progress to church leaders. Church president Wilford Woodruff instructed him to return to Canada and expand the settlement, with a goal to make Cardston "permanent and self-sustaining." When the church's Alberta Stake was created in 1895, the first outside of the United States, Card became its first president. Irrigation projects were successful, and businesses and thousands of Latter-day Saint settlers came to Cardston. Whenever he returned to Utah to report on Cardston's progress to church leaders, he visited Painter and Rigby in Logan and Rexburg, Idaho, respectively. Dividing his time between his three families and providing for a growing number of children was challenging. He sought to provide each of them with as much love and financial support as possible. He worked as a land agent for the dominion government. He died on September 9, 1906.

Ten thousand Mormon settlers lived in southern Alberta in 1911. According to the LDS Church's website, 82,088 members of the Church live in Alberta today.

He is the great-grandfather of author Orson Scott Card, author of Ender's Game.