In 1887, John Taylor-who by then had become the president of the church-sent Charles Ora Card, the president of the church's Cache Stake, to Canada's Northwest Territories to establish a Mormon colony that was beyond the reach of the United States government's anti-polygamy prosecutions.
Stirling, one of Alberta's original Mormon settlements and a National Historic Site of Canada, was founded by Theodore Brandley in 1899, and is one of few towns in Canada plotted out by the Plat of Zion.