LDS church breaks ground on new westside temple

By Lethbridge Herald on April 29, 2025.

Al Beeber
Lethbridge Herald

Ground was turned on Saturday morning for the Lethbridge Temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

The historic ceremony marked the beginnings of Alberta’s fourth temple, the others being in Edmonton, Calgary and Cardston. The latter, finished more than a century ago in 1923, was the first in the province.

The inclusive ceremony featured several sod-turnings with federal, provincial and civic dignitaries. Anyone who wanted to take shovel in hand for the occasion was given the chance to dig into the dirt.

The temple will be located at 38 Mauritania Road West, directly across from the Cavendish Farms Centre.

The ceremony, under sunny skies in front of a large crowd of invited guests, featured various speakers talking about the importance of the temple to church faithful. And one common theme was repeated: that while the temple will serve members of the church, it will be a place of welcoming for all people, regardless of faith. The ceremony and sod-turning reflected that inclusivity with representatives of different faiths present for the occasion.

When finished, the temple will serve more than 20,000 church members from Lethbridge and surrounding area including Raymond, Taber, Fort  Macleod and Medicine Hat.

The two-storey temple will have about 44,500 square feet of space and will support the growing church membership in the area, alleviating pressures on the Cardston and Calgary temples while accommodating future projected growth here. About six per cent of Lethbridge’s population self-identifies as  members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, according  to the 2021 federal census. About 12 per cent of the regional  population – roughly 27,000 people – are members, according to the  church.

The temple will be built of stone and custom art g1ass, and will have extensive landscaping with plants, grasses and flowers native to southern Alberta.

The church says the temple is being designed to “harmonize with its  surroundings, prioritizing balance and beauty.” In addition to the  temple itself, the grounds will also have two ancillary buildings – one for grounds maintenance crews and the other for church members to buy closing. A public open house will be scheduled to tour the temple after it’s completed.

First organized in upstate New York in 1830, the church now has more than 17 million members worldwide.

Church temples are reserved for ceremonial events and are different from the Sunday worship meeting houses members attend.

Elder Randall K. Bennett, a Magrath native who gave the dedicatory prayer, told the gathering that “really not in a million years that I’d ever expect to be assigned to come back to the place of my birth”  for the occasion.

“Ultimately, we’re all family,” he said, asking members to schedule time to visit the temple, citing the experiences of himself and wife Shelly while living in Edmonton, hours from the Cardston temple, and in Los Angeles where a temple was 1.5 hours away, a distance which can take longer in southern California traffic.

After moving to a community only 412 minutes from two temples, Bennett said he didn’t feel a need to schedule temple time and, to his horror, they suddenly realized they weren’t going at all.

“Don’t make the mistake, those of you living close to this location, to not schedule time. Life takes over, we’re all busy, we’re all extremely busy.”

Elder James Evanson told the audience that “this building will be a place of peace and refuge for the entire community, regardless of our religious affiliations.”

Clayne Steed, who oversaw the ceremony, said that as the commencement of construction was celebrated, it’s important to remember the reason temples are being built.

“It’s so we can make sacred covenants with our heavenly father and  receive priesthood ordinances that will bind us to him and to the saviour Jesus Christ,” Steed said.

After the ceremony, Evanson said that, as a person who grew up in Lethbridge, “this is a really joyous occasion for us. It’s hard to really express the joy that happens when you get an opportunity to  create a place that people can come and really feel the spirit of their saviour.”

The temple, he added, is a reminder that all people are brothers and  sisters and children of their heavenly father.

The temple will have a number of rooms, including one for performing baptisms of the dead. It will also house “sealing rooms” where  families will be sealed “for time and all eternity,” said Evanson. There will also be instruction rooms and a “celestial room” which represents a bit of heaven  on earth where members “can feel the presence of God in a very real  way,” Evanson added.

Evanson said even though the Lethbridge and Cardston temples will be  fairly close to each other, history shows that in a lot of cases, this can mean people have more access so the number of people going to temples actually increases.