Perhaps the most interesting event in Lord Strathcona's visit last year to Alberta was his meeting again with Père Lacombe. It was in the Government House gardens at Edmonton, overlooking the Saskatchewan River. All the guests fell back out of earshot while the aged men clasped hands and talked over other days and of the boys who had long since crossed the height of land to the ultimate sea.
At the present time Père Lacombe is living at Midnapore, near Calgary, in a home for poor old folk and children, the money to build which he collected himself.
... And there is the story of Father Goiffon who was frozen near Emerson on the eve of All Saints' Day, 1860. It was told to me by Father Lestanc,[[2]] who, eighty years ago, was born at Brest in Brittany. Father Lestanc has been fifty-five years in the West and North, nineteen of which were spent at St. Boniface under Bishop Taché. In spite of his extreme age, Lestanc has a hardy-moulded figure, and a strong, clear voice. One cannot listen to him for long without being impressed by his affectional force and broad reach of humanity. He is not clear about things of yesterday, but take him back over the decades and his memory rings true as a bell.
Goiffon had been at St. Paul, Minneapolis, making the yearly purchases for his mission. Among other things he bought a city-bred horse to carry him home. Fifty years ago St. Paul was seventeen days' journey from Emerson, on the border-line, and folk travelled in caravans.
One day's journey from Emerson, Father Goiffon left the party that he might push on the more rapidly and reach his mission post to say Mass on All Saints' Day. To use a northern colloquialism, he travelled light, carrying with him but one meal and no blanket. Neither had he matches or an axe, for, bear in mind, he was only a young priest, and he hoped to be in his shack by fall of night.
Soon after noonday there blew up a blinding snow-storm that made progress impossible. A usurping, all-invading sheet of snow settled down over the plains and turned the air into a white darkness. The man tied his horse to a willow shrub and lay down in the snow. The hours passed painfully on, but the youth kept his head buried in his saddle that his face might not freeze. When at last he looked up, he found his horse dead by his side. I told you a bit ago, it was a city-bred horse and no trailer.
And now came the fight for life. The boy priest had no shelter but the flaccid, unstrung body of his horse, already cold in death. I do not know about the pain of the night, except that at the edge of day, one foot and leg were frozen and the toes of the other, so that he could not stand upright. I wonder if he heard the bell from his home in France as he lay in the snow! They say men do. Something must have been sounding in his ears, for he did not hear the caravan as it passed him in the morning.
At midday he cut a piece of flesh off the horse and ate it.
"A crude diet, Mon Père," I remark.
"Oui, oui," replies the old Breton. "What you Anglais call a 'sleepshod' dinnaire! What would you, Madame? One must browse where he is tethered."