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Date of birth: Place of birth:
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Photo : Archives de l'école Père Lacombe |
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Father Albert Lacombe was
born in Saint-Sulpice on February 28, 1827. He was
the son of Albert Lacombe and Agathe Duhamel. He
studied at the Collège l'Assomption and was
ordained priest of the Oblate Order on June 13,
1849. The young priest immediately set out for the
West, and worked in Pembina, North Dakota, from
1849 to 1851. 1851, he returned to Montreal and was
appointed curate in Berthier. In March 1852, he
offered his services to Msgr Alexandre
Taché, the new Suffragan Bishop of
Saint-Boniface, and followed him to the Red River.
It was the start of a great adventure in the
Canadian West.
In 1852, Father Lacombe went
to Edmonton, where he spent the winter among the
Cree and the Métis. In 1853, he moved to Lac
Sainte-Anne, and two years later undertook the long
and arduous trip to Lesser Slave Lake. In 1858, he
founded the Saint-Joachim mission at Fort Edmonton.
In 1861, he decided on the site for a new mission
in Saint-Albert, Alberta. Three years later, he was
given the mission of evangelizing the Cree and the
Blackfoot, the main Amerindian tribes of the
western plains. From 1865 to 1872, he crisscrossed
the Prairies and founded among other things the
colony of Saint-Paul des Cris in Brosseau, Alberta.
He also acted as a peacemaker in the wars between
the Cree and the Blackfoot, and opened the first
flour mill in Saint-Albert. In 1872, Father Lacombe
was appointed to the parish of Winnipeg (Fort Gary)
and put in charge of: colonization in Manitoba. In
1875, he was sent to Eastern Canada and the United
States to encourage colonization. In 1879, having
returned Manitoba, he was appointed Vicar General
of Saint-Boniface, and from 1880 to 1882 his
special care was for the workers employed to build
the Canadian Pacific railway.
In 1880, he became the first
parish priest in the growing town of Calgary. In
1884, he founded the Amerindian School in Dunbow,
Alberta. He acted as a negotiator between Canadian
Pacific and the Blackfoot, who did not want the
railway crossing their territory. Canadian Pacific
was grateful to Father Lacombe until the end of his
long life. In 1885, the Red River Rebellion erupted
in the West, and the Prime Minister called on
Father Lacombe's services to keep the Plains tribes
out of the conflict. He opened a hospital on the
Blood Reserve in 1893 and a school in 1898. He
played an important role in the establishment of
schools in the West. In 1900 and 1904 he visited
Austria, where he met Emperor Franz Joseph, and
Galicia, in Eastern Europe, to discuss the
religious interests of Galician settlers in Canada.
In 1904, he went to live in Pincher Creek, in what
he called his "Hermitage" of Saint-Michel. In 1909,
he shouldered the task of organizing a hospice for
elderly people in Midnapore, the Lacombe Home,
where he lived until his death in 1916.
The Plains Amerindians
considered Albert Lacombe as a brother and
nicknamed him "Man with a heart", while his
parishioners called him "notre vieux connaissant"
-- "our wise elder".
Today a number of
geographical sites, and a great many monuments,
buildings (including Château-Lacombe in
Edmonton) and historic sites bear the French name
of this great founder and peacemaker of the
Canadian West. His body is buried in the crypt of
the Saint-Albert parish church.
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