OSCAR LACOMBE

Oscar J Lacombe has been described by media types as having “a salty humour and strategic sense of a good soldier.”  And it is this humour that has got him out of many jams and what makes him so personable today.

For Mr. Lacombe, a considerable period of time has been devoted to a soldier’s life.  He joined the Armed Forces in 1949.  Promoted to warrant officer, he served in Korea in 1951.  He went on to Japan, then to Europe for five years under NATO.  He completed tours of Egypt, Cyprus and the Middle East as a peacekeeper for the UN.  In all, he spent 27 years with the military.

After leaving the army in 1973, he became a bodyguard for then premier of Alberta, Peter Lougheed, a job he held for the next 12 years.  This position set the stage for him to become the sergeant-at-arms in the Alberta Legislature, a post he held from 1980 to 1993.  He was the first Métis person appointed to that position in Canada. 

Mr. Lacombe was so highly regarded as a sergeant-at-arms by provincial leadership, that on the day after his retirement on January 26, 1993, the Alberta Assembly passed this motion:  “Be it resolved that, the Legislative Assembly of Alberta confers upon Oscar J. Lacombe for his lifetime, the title of Honorary Sergeant-at Arms.”

He was born in St. Paul, Alberta in 1929.  On his father’s side, he is a great-great grandnephew of the famous missionary Albert Lacombe; on his mother’s side, he is a great grandson of Lawrence Garneau, a Métis pioneer who homesteaded the land where the University of Alberta now stands. 

Although he is proud of his heritage, he remembers a hard life growing up in a Métis family of 14  -- a life where the family just barely got by.  They hunted so that they could put meat on the table.  “If it wasn’t for a .22 and a shotgun, I would have starved as a kid.” Oscar says.  He shot his first deer at 9 years of age.  For a young hunter, alone in the hay meadow, this was a character-shaping moment.