Town votes on 100-year-old booze ban

A Canadian town where the sale of alcohol has been illegal for the last 109 years is to vote on its reintroduction.

Cardston’s Mormon temple. Credit: ldschurchtemples.com

Cardston in Alberta was founded by Mormon settlers in 1887 and has enforced a ban on the sale of alcohol for the past 109 years when Alberta first became a province.

However residents have been given the chance to have their say on whether they want sales of alcohol to be made legal voting in a plebiscite today, as reported by Global News. 

Residents will be asked whether they are “in favour of alcohol sales within the Town of Cardston”, and if they are in favour of “restaurants and/or recreational facilities within the Town of Cardston selling alcohol.”

About 80% of the town’s 3,500 residents are Mormon – a religion that prohibits tea, coffee and alcohol.

The two nearest communities where alcohol can be bought are Fort Macleod, 64km to the north and Lethbridge, 79km to the northeast.

The town is home to the Cardston Alberta Temple – the first Mormon temple to be built in Canada and the first outside of the US.

Finished in 1913, the temple took 10 years to build with its ground’s spreading across 10 acres.