Talk:Bountiful, British Columbia

Expanded description

I've expanded the description to include the fact that Bountiful is a polygamous community, and that it's located in the Creston Valley. I also replaced the two external links (which were both to news articles) with one link to a more general piece on the community.

Perhaps it is simply due to lack of interest, but I can't find any category (other than Category:British Columbia communities, of course) to put this community in. There don't seem to be any existing categories relating specifically to polygamy or polygamous communities.

The article is still very much a stub. I'll try to add more information later. --Azkar 19:41, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Wells

Were his 2005 visits before or after the local church split with the FLDS? MrZaius^talk 20:21, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Cleanup/expansion/focus

There's something wrong with the first sentence in the second paragraph; I'm not sure what the author is trying to say. Also, I don't think an article about a BC town should have 1/3 of its content taken up by an American former fugitive. Bountiful is not Warren Jeffs, and even though his apprehension is fascinating, it shouldn't make up such a large part of this article. Anchoress 16:56, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

Content on the FLDS

Right now, the Bountiful article is very heavy on Church information, and the main FLDS article is very thin on information regarding the BC branch, so I have posted a request for guidance on condensing the BC article and expanding the main FLDS article. Any input/help is welcome. Anchoress 10:30, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Population

The article states that only one third of Bountiful are members of the polygamous group. I wonder what their source is, because it is heavily implied in other online sources that the entire town is part of the church. And one of the sources cited in for this article is this one [1] that says most if not all the residents belong to the church. So that's something that definitely has to be straightened out.

What seems strange to me is that Bountiful doesn't seem to exist in anything that we would normally call on as a reliable source when we're writing a BC community article. There's no results on google maps here. There's no postal code apparently. Good thing for BCGNIS or I wouldn't have even found the coordinates. [2]. But even BCGNIS's info is at odds with the article's. BCGNIS says it was settled in the late 60's by Joseph Blackmore. The article say 1947 and doesn't mention Joseph Blackmore.CindyBo^talk 19:30, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

• Can we confirm the BCGNIS coordinates with another source? I really thought they would be more isolated. --maclean 05:58, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

The coordinates do seem wanky, but they should be in the ballpark and I can't find another source so far.CindyBo^talk 21:41, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

• I know that in the many documents I read about the group last year, it was suggested that the town was pretty much run by non-members (although whether it was Bountiful or Lister they were referring to I don't know), but that the group exerted a great deal of influence over non-members in positions of power (police, town council etc). The (pejorative, although possibly accurate) term used was that the town governors and police were 'owned' by the FLDS. Anchoress 22:29, 7 August 2007 (UTC)
  • Town probably isn't the best way of describing Bountiful. Town implies there are services such as commerce, government, etc. But it looks to be more of a settlement, just a group of people living close together in the rural area. Their "police" is the 12-officer Creston RCMP detachment who cover nearly 14,000 people, their "government" consists of the Director of the Regional District of Central Kootenay's Electoral Area 'B' (who has about 5000 people in his jurisdiction around rural Creston and sits on a Board of 19 other Directors). By influence they probably meant that they are successful at being left alone. --maclean 05:58, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Lister, British Columbia

Okay, I started a stub on Lister, British Columbia. I kind of suspect that there is a bit of confusion here and that the population stats mentioned in this article are about Lister. One third of Lister's population of 500-1000 people being members of a polygamist group seems to ring true and in several sources online, Lister is mentioned as being home to the group. I'll poke around. I didn't put anything about Bountiful into Lister yet.CindyBo^talk 21:20, 7 August 2007 (UTC) Here's a source that says "In the mid-1940s, a small group of excommunicated Mormons from Utah and Alberta bought land in Lister, B.C" [3].CindyBo^talk 21:29, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Here's another source, the Vancouver Sun, which says that the group unofficially changed Lister's name to Bountiful [4]. So, I guess we can safely say that Lister is the official town and that Bountiful is the name of the commune?CindyBo^talk 21:57, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Grrr, I don't know. I wish the Vancouver libraries weren't closed because of the strike. Info on the group from the article says that they bought up a large packet of land on the outskirts of town, so I wonder if it would be accurate to say that Bountiful is an unincorporated community within the city limits of the town of Lister? Anchoress 22:26, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

• As an unincorporated community Lister would not have any political (or city or town) boundaries. Using political boundaries, it would be accurate to say that Bountiful is an unincorporated community within RDCK's Electoral Area 'B'. --maclean 06:05, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

I'm sure that would be close to the mark. One problem is there's very little on Lister either and it seems to just be another unincorporated settlement. I haven't found out for sure yet. There's very little on Lister at BC Archives even. All the information seems to be in the news stories and there's a pile of recent ones, many from the States, but their facts are all on the polygamy issues, not on the facts about the community itself.CindyBo^talk 22:52, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Pleasant surprise. I just checked our library here in PG, and they have Keep sweet : children of polygamy and hopefully it will have the details. I'll go get it.CindyBo^talk 22:59, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Yesterday, I poked around and made a few phonecalls and emails doing that no-no original research and confirmed that Lister and Bountiful are definitely considered two separate entities but are located next to eachother (and perhaps overlapping), I know that my poking around isn't citable... but I wanted to find out if we are on the right track. Anyhow they do need separate articles and as Maclean says there aren't official "town boundaries" to worry about or mention. Also, roll of drums, please the book Keep Sweet Children of Polygamy has some of the history... phew thank goodness. Someone with reliable citable facts! The gist of it is this: while it is argued (locally) whether Bountiful is part of Lister or Huscroft, they are not part of either and shouldn't be portrayed as such. The polygamist community itself was settled by Harold Blackmore in 1946 and more arrived in the following years. The group took the name of Bountiful after Winston Blackmore became the Bishop in the 80s.CindyBo^talk 20:20, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Peck recommendations

fyi - the article could be updated about the special prosecutor's recommendations to ask the courts about the constitutionality of Canada's polygamy laws. [5] Canuckle 23:17, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

And this update as well: [6] Anchoress 14:19, 21 August 2007 (UTC)