The Oblate influence on Albertan history is evident by the number of towns named after individual priests: Lacombe, Leduc, Vegreville and Grouard. Father Albert Lacombe, Oblate priest, travelled into Blackfoot country in 1857. Known as the "Man of Good Heart" Lacombe met and began a lasting friendship with Crowfoot. Between 1865 and 1871, when he returned to eastern Canada, Lacombe went on roving missions among the Blackfoot Confederacy. In was not until 1873, however, that Bishop Vital Grandin sent Father Constantine Scollen, an Irish-born Oblate, to establish a permanent mission in southern Alberta. The mission sight lay on a Blackfoot wintering site. Grandin then assigned two more priests, E. Bonnald and Leon Doucet, to the area. The latter spent a winter at Buffalo Lake on the northern edge of Blackfoot territory. In 1875, the two priests moved to the juncture of the Elbow and Bow Rivers near present-day Calgary. They established their mission, Our Lady of the Peace, one-mile down the Bow. Other permanent Catholic missions in southern Alberta included Brocket (Peigan) in 1881, Cluny (Siksika) in 1882, and Standoff (Blood) in 1899.

Father Pio Bruno Lateri
Founder of the 
Oblates of Mary Immaculate