A man with two dozen wives and nearly 150 children is the first Canadian to be convicted of polygamy in more than 100 years.

The Canadian Press reports two men were given conditional sentences on polygamy charges Tuesday. A British Columbia Supreme Court judge said neither would have to serve jail time.

Winston Blackmore was convicted of having 24 wives. He's been ordered to serve six months house arrest, but is allowed to go to work and attend medical emergencies. He'll also been ordered to 12 months probation and 150 hours of community service work.

The CBC reports Blackmore married the 24 women between 1990 and 2014, fathering 149 children. Some of his wives were as young as 15 when they married, Justice Sheri Ann Donegan said.

Another Canadian polygamist, James Oler, was convicted of having five wives. He'll serve three months house arrest, followed by 12 months of probation and 75 hours of community service.

According to the NewsHub, it's illegal in Canada for a married person to enter into another marriage. Canada has only two other recorded convictions in history for polygamy, in 1899 and 1906.

Donegan said in a ruling that she turned down the special prosecutor's request for months-long jail time for Blackmore and Oler because both men are "hard-working" and otherwise law-abiding.

"He's made it clear that no sentence will deter him from practicing his faith," she said of Blackmore. "The concept of remorse is foreign to him in this context."

The Canadian Press reports both Blackmore and Oler were bishops of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a breakaway Mormon sect that believes in plural marriage. They've both been a part of a small religious community in British Columbia called Bountiful.

The maximum sentence for polygamy under the Criminal Code is five years in prison, according to the Metro UK.