3:12

On the main street in Magrath stood a temple. It was right on the edge of what the townspeople thought of as downtown, marking the northern border of the business part of the community from the more residential portion near the highway.

It had been built by the large Mormon population in the earlier part of the twentieth century, but had fallen empty after most of the faithful had left during the Second World War. The town had grown enormously during those years as hundreds of pilots from around the commonwealth had arrived to train at the airbase that had sprung up. This transient population had remained through much of the Cold War but had finally disappeared in the mid ’60s when the base had been closed.

After the temple had been closed by the last of the departing Mormons, an enterprising young family had squatted in it for a while and eventually opened its doors as a music hall and bar while living in the quarters that once housed the transients and visitors. There had been a bit of a scandal at that, as the townspeople thought a church was a church even if it was a Mormon one, but no one really championed the cause and eventually the issue became just one of those coffeeshop grumbles that provided a point of commonality for the oldtimers to chew over like a soggy rawhide bone.

After the base closed, it was used as a town hall for a while and occasionally as a movie theatre or stage for the local theatre group, but it often stood empty and uncared for. Early in the ’80s a group from nearby Lethbridge enquired as to ownership and eventually settled with the town a deal which brought about its latest incarnation. The group spent a couple of months renovating and repairing the old structure. Then they announced the opening of a hostel and retreat for the environmentally conscious. The semi-arid desert and the presence of some of the last remaining short-grass prairie in North America attracted a reasonable amount of interest, and the entrepreneurs felt it was enough to make a little money while helping raise awareness for the disappearing ecoscape.