Mary Jayne Blackmore was born and grew up in the polygamist community of Bountiful in rural British Columbia. She is the fifth child of Winston Blackmore’s one hundred and fifty children and had a church-assigned marriage four days before her seventeenth birthday. She gave birth to her two children before she was twenty years old, and started college at twenty-one. The young family moved frequently for her husband’s work and her studies, but their goal was always to return home to raise their children within the Bountiful community. After eleven years of marriage, Blackmore and her husband went their separate ways.
She has spent the last decade raising her children and raising a few eyebrows attending Burning Man and Shambhala. She enjoys backpacking and snowboarding. Passionate about understanding culture and women, she connects with the men and women in her travels to places like Turkey and India. She is engaged in political and environmental activism and ran for Mayor of the Town of Creston in 2018. She is an active member in the Bountiful community where she grew up and currently plants her garden and proudly calls herself a feminist.
