LACOMBE, ALBERT (7) (148 ENGLISH -- 147 fran)

LACOMBE, ALBERT (7)  (148 ENGLISH)

Early beginnings of Saint-Alberta

  The date was January 14, 1861. The day was crisp, but sunny. The sound of barkling dogs and the crunch of sligh runners on the hard packed trail piedced the crystalline silence. A small entourage stopper on a hilltop and two Catholic priests and their guides prepared to partake of a meal of tea and pemmican. Below them lay the Sturgeon River to the west, the frozen waters of Big Lake. En route to Fort Edmonton from Lac Ste-Anne, Father Albert Lacombe and Bishop Alexandre Taché were searching for a suitable location for a new Roman Catholic mission.

  On earlier journeys, Father Lacombe had observed this same spot, one he considered to be favorable for an agricultural based mission. Now, he sought his bishop's opinion. Like Lacocmbe, the bishop was greatly impressed by the natural beauty of the site and by its apparent potential for prosperous settlement. Cutting a small sapling. Tach. planted it firmly in the snow. Turning to the younger priest, he enthusiastically endorsed the new mission site.

  "Mon Père" he stated, "You were right. This site is magnificent. I choose it for a new mission and I want it to be called St. Albert in honor of your patron saint. Here,"  he went on,  "you will build a chapel."

   In accordance with Bishop Taché's charge, the Mission of St-Alberta was established in 1861. The first chapel was located as instructed on the site where the bishop had planted the sapling that cold January day. Surrounding the Mission, a number of cabins and farm buildings soon ssprang up to form the nucleus of the community of St-Albert.

   The original settlement extended in a strip three and a half miles long and a mile wife along the north side of Big Lake, and then for another six miles along the Sturgeon River Valley. The Mission site was located  roughly in the middle of the Settlement. Today, the City of St.Albert continued to occupy the same attrative location in the Sturgeon River Valley, immediately northwest of  the City of Edmonton. It contains within its boundaries an area of 13.7 square mile (35.6 square kilometers) and is bisected by Highway 2, running nother-south. The Canadian National Railway serves the city and the west, which the Canadian Northern runs north along the east wide of the city.

  St-Albert serves a large rural area to the north east and west, whoch main economic base is agriculture, gas, oil and other industries based on natural reserces. The dictrict is set on black, fertile soil and provides some the best agricultural land in the province.

  The serpentine Sturgeon River bisects the city as it flows from west to east. forming a valley some two hundred feet wide upstream from Big Lake to a width of over a mile and a half just two miles downstream

from the lake. Its eventual destination is the North Saskatchewan River which it enters noth of Fort Saskatchewan Big Lake, to the west of the city,  is fed from the northwest by the Sturgeon River which enters on the north shore, and by Atim Creek which flows into the western tip of the lake through swampy land.

  Native vegetation at the time of the Mission's founding included large bluffs covered with poplar immediately north of the Mission which prairie land with poplar and willo predominated somewhat to northwest. South of the Mission and across the river the land was well timbered with birch, spruce, poplar and willow, while in the southwest, tamarack was also found.

  Big Lake provided as it does today, a natural habitat for ducks, geese and other wildflowl. WIldlife ws reported to have been plentiful; mule deer, elk, buffalo, bear and even antelope frequented the region. Rabbits abounded on land, which muskrats, dominated the sloughs, and marshes. Fish were plentiful both in the lake and in the river, and the abundance of strurgeon, no doubt led to the naming of the river.

  St. Albert's climated provided four district seasons.l Werm summers with average daytime temperature in the low 20 C and hightime averages of 15C.are proceeded and followed by mild springs and autumns. The majority of the 2200 hours of sunshinee each year are experienced in these months. Winters and cold: January has a average temperature of -15C and the average snowfall is about fifty incher per year. Winds, primarily from the northwest, average a velocity of twn miles an hours throughout the year.

  More than a century has passed since the founding of the Mission in 1861, During that time tyhe community has experienced changed in size, in the composition of pupolation, in the economy and form of government and in ethic and social character. Within two decades of its establishment, St-Albert and district underwent a major transition, from a community dominated bythe buffalo hunt to an agricultural orientated settlement. Its populstion changed also from a predominantly Métis and largely transient community to a more stable, French Canadian and European population.        

NOTE:  

ref:  The Black Robe's Vision

The oldest existing structure in Alberta. 
It now serves as a museum.