Bountiful Indeed

"Student grades should be recorded at the time the student completes the course and entered on the student's 1704 (permanent student record) accordingly -- not written on a Post-it Note to be entered the following academic year."
British Columbia Office of the Inspector of Independent Schools

Photo of recess time at Mormon Hills School in Bountiful.   Photograph by: Ian Smith , Vancouver Sun

The B.C. Department of Education is concerned over the level of education young people receive at the Mormon Hill School in Bountiful, B.C. They should be. The province also financially supports the school and expects it to have a curriculum that will be of educational value to the fundamentalist sect's schoolchildren. Fond hope that is.  Yet, according to school records they're all A-grade students receiving high marks. So what's the problem?

Plenty of problems when students write provincial exams. A "significant discrepancy" that troubles authorities. The children are taught the doctrine of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, in fact, not the provincial curriculum of the three Rs. It is religious doctrine based on Mormonism as it was practised 100 years ago. No matter, millions continue to flow from the provincial government to this little community.

Where nearly everyone with the school is related; the 182 students, the 11 teachers, the staff and the directors of the school; Mr. Blackmore, his brother and one of his sons being directors. Six teachers are surnamed Blackmore; one is Winston's daughter and the school secretary one of his celestial wives. Five of the teachers have no accreditation as teachers the health and career program is based on a Web-based version, though none of the school's computers is connected to the Internet. Details.

God, according to Bountiful's social values, determines who will marry whom and delivers that information personally as a kindly interventionist indulgence to the church's prophet/president, none other than Mr. Blackmore. Girls as young as 12 are forced by church leaders into "celestial" or "plural" marriages. Marriages, somewhat unsurprisingly reserved only for the most influential and powerful men within the community.

The Mormon Church has disavowed the offshoot Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, and is in the process of suing it for misappropriating its copyrighted name, giving its reputation a surly smudge of moral social offense. But that hasn't stopped its leader Winston Blackmore. And Mr. Blackmore's black reputation within British Columbia, as the immoral leader of a polygamist offshoot of Mormon hasn't stopped him from victimizing the children born under his rule.

Mr. Blackmore, in fact, is himself the father of over 115 children living at Bountiful, born to his 26 wives. In fact, there are so many familial interconnections within the community of incestuous libidos that his blood runs in some distant, watered-down way through a huge swathe of the community. And, this situation, in Canada, is permitted to fester. Canada and Canadian law upholding freedom of religion.

Not so with Lev Tahor, yet another idiotic community of people following a self-appointed Messiah whom the gullible believe will lead them into righteousness and the favour of the Almighty. The followers of Lev Tahor were accused by child welfare authorities of child neglect, of failing to teach their children proper Canadian formulaic three Rs convention that are the fundamentals of a modern education, rather than instilling in them the precepts of a Medieval-era Judaism.

And because child welfare authorities were breathing down the necks of this fundamentalist sect and threatening to take their children into welfare custody, the sect elders moved their community holus-bolus from Quebec to small-town Ontario and since the concerned authorities continued their scrutiny which the sect took as oppressive interference in their religious community, they have fled to sanctuary in Guatemala.

That problem solved; the future welfare of those children living within an impoverished society where no authority much cares about the welfare of children leaving in their tens of thousands to find haven elsewhere, is not Canada's concern now.