work for education and infrastructure made him a "pillar of the community." Such infrastructure included irrigation for multiple Utah towns, on which he worked for fifteen years as "irrigation canal company director." He was in charge of five mills during the same time period. His involvement in education continued as a member of the first board of trustees of Brigham Young College. Church service Card was called to the 56th quorum of Seventy shortly after arriving in Utah. He served an LDS mission in Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, New York, and Massachusetts in 1871. He was then the Cache Valley Stake President from 1884 to 1890. As stake president, he oversaw meetings for 30 Church units (wards and branches) 4 times a year. During this time, the LDS Church was experiencing strained relations with the federal United States government over the church practice of plural marriage. Card requested to be sent to Mexico, but was instead assigned to settle in Canada. Church president John Taylor instructed him to find "asylum and justice" in the north. Card took his wife, Zina Williams Card, and left for the North-West Territories of Canada in 1886, successfully escaping arrest. Travelling with twelve other families from Cache Valley, he founded Cardston, North-West Territories, Canada (in present-day Alberta), on June 3, 1887, at what was then called Lee's Creek encampment. Once the Alberta Stake was established, he became its first president. He thus served as a stake president for a total of more than 20 years. Canada The settlers created a town with a grid system and began irrigation projects. Mormon immigrants were praised by a Canadian government inspector for their irrigation efforts, but polygamy was outlawed in Canada soon after the settlement was created. In 1888, a request from John Taylor, Francis Lyman, and Charles Card to practice polygamy was denied by Canadian Prime Minister John MacDonald. Regardless, the population of Mormon immigrants in Cardston and its surrounding areas continued to flourish. In 1889 Card returned to Utah to give an account of Cardston's progress to church leaders. President Wilford Woodruff instructed him to return to Canada and expand the settlement, with a goal to make Cardston "permanent and self-sustaining." He subsequently purchased the surrounding areas and established settlements at Mountain View, Kimball, Beazer, and Leavitt in present-day Alberta. A railroad connected the colonies to the outside world, and encouraged more immigration; installation of telephones in