The First Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ has released an exterior rendering of the Lethbridge Alberta Temple, which was first announced a year ago and had its site released last fall.
It will be the fourth house of the Lord in in the province of Alberta and one of 11 temples in Canada.
Planned as a 45,000-square-foot, multistory building, the temple will be built on a site of 9-plus acres on the northwest corner of Whoop-Up Drive and Mauretania Road West in Lethbridge. A distribution center is projected for the site as well.
President Russell M. Nelson announced a temple for Lethbridge in April 2023 general conference. The site and a location map were released on Sept. 5, 2023. The exterior rendering was first published Monday, April 29, 2024, on ChurchofJesusChrist.org.
More information — such as a groundbreaking date — will be released later.
Dedicated 100 years ago in August 1923, the Cardston Alberta Temple was the first in Canada and the Church’s sixth overall. It was the first temple constructed outside of the United States and its territories; the Laie Hawaii Temple was dedicated in 1919, when the islands were a U.S. territory.
Other temples in Alberta are in Edmonton (dedicated in 1999) and Calgary (2012). Additional dedicated temples throughout Canada are in Toronto (1990), Halifax (1999), Regina (1999), Montreal (2000), Vancouver (2010) and Winnipeg (2021). President Nelson announced a temple for Victoria, British Columbia, in the April 2024 general conference..
The gospel was first preached in Canada when Joseph Smith Sr., the father of the Prophet Joseph Smith, crossed the U.S. border and went to several towns in eastern Canada. Over the next two decades, some 2,500 Canadians were converted. Cardston was settled by Latter-day Saints in 1887.
Today, more than 203,000 Church members in nearly 490 congregations reside in Canada, with nearly 85,000 Latter-day Saints in more than 230 congregations in Alberta.
