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Born at St. Sulpice, just outside of Montréal, in 1827 to a farming
family, Albert Lacombe spent the majority of his youth on the farm.
His theological studies began at a very early age and during his
schooling he was greatly influenced by some of his teachers whose
tales of buffalo hunts, Aboriginal warriors and the struggles of the
first missionaries in the West sparked a curiosity and sense of
adventure in the young Oblate.
After being ordained in 1849 he served at the Red River settlement
for two years before he was sent to Fort Edmonton, where he was to experience for himself life on
the western plains. After a brief period he moved north of
Edmonton
to Lac Ste. Anne where he set up a new mission to minister to the
Métis
and
Cree
in that area. During his time there, he studied the Cree
language and used his trace Aboriginal ancestry to gain an affinity with
the Aboriginal populations in the area. His sense of adventure and duty
allowed the industrious minister a chance to expand his parish as
far north as
Lesser Slave Lake.
Yet by 1861 Father Lacombe had not succeeded in persuading the
Indians at Lac Ste. Anne to give up the nomadic lifestyle in favour
of a more European, agriculture-centred way of life on the prairies.
As a result, he began searching for a new mission site, more
suitable for farming and cultivation.
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