Lacombe

Sister cities

• Rikubetsu

History

Lacombe is named after Albert Lacombe (28 February 1827 — 12 December 1916), a French-Canadian Roman Catholic Oblate missionary who lived among and evangelized the Cree and Blackfoot First Nations of western Canada. He is now remembered for having brokered a peace between the Cree and Blackfoot, negotiating construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway through Blackfoot territory, and securing a promise from the Blackfoot leader Crowfoot to refrain from joining the North-West Rebellion of 1885. The Lacombe Police Service have policed the community since 1900. The first permanent settler, Ed Barnett, arrived in 1883. Barnett was a retired member of the North-West Mounted Police (NWMP) who had served a mere three years. He left Fort Macleod in August 1881 at 23 years of age. According to his own diary and his official obituary in the RCMP Quarterly, spring 1940, on July 19, 1881, Barnett was among a small NWMP party that escorted Chief Sitting Bull and his people to the Canada–US border. Along the Calgary and Edmonton Trail, he established a "stopping house" for travellers on a land grant given to him for serving in the NWMP. His family and friends moved out of Ontario and the community began to grow. The stopping house then became known as Barnett's Siding. The Calgary and Edmonton Railway reached the area in 1891. This provided better access to the area and new opportunities for settlement. By 1893, the downtown blocks and lots were surveyed. Village status was granted in 1896, and town status in 1902. The President of the C.P.R., William Van Horne, renamed Barnett's Siding to Lacombe in honour of Father Lacombe.

Geography

Lacombe experiences a humid continental climate (Köppen climate classification Dfb).