Lacombe, Albert

LACOMBE, ALBERT. - Born on 18 Feb. 1827 in St-Sulpice (Canada), a priest in 1850, an Oblate of Mary Immaculate in 1855, he died on 12 Dec. 1916 at Midnapore. His long life was devoted above all to the Indians and half-breeds of the Canadian northwest, who called him "the man of the beautiful soul" or "the good heart." The power he exercised over the hearts of the Indians made him capable of preventing wars, expeditions of revenge and bloody enmities.

In 1861 he founded St-Albert, which later became through his work an outpost of Christianity in the northwest; in 1869 he liberated Edmonton; in 1885 he prevented the Blackfeet and other Indian tribes from joining the uprising of the half-breeds. In 1884 he opened the first school of handicrafts for the Indians, in 1894 he inaugurated the colony of St-Paul for the half-breeds threatened with extermination. He composed a whole series of linguistic works on the Indian languages of the Cree, the Assiniboine, the Blackfeet. The most celebrated publication is the illustrated Catechism, which in one plate represents the economy of salvation from the Creation up to the Last Judgment. In 1900 and in 1904 he went to the archbishop of Lviv and to the emperor Francis Joseph of Austria to obtain Ruthenian priests. In the struggle for the Canadian schools he negotiated with great skill and good success with the government to save the Catholic schools. For the Canadian Pacific Railway Company he cleared the way through the Indian territories. The small town of L. took its name in his honor. At St-Albert a monument was erected to him in 1929.