Émile-Joseph Legal

Who was Émile-Joseph Legal?

Émile-Joseph Legal was born in France and came to Lachine, Quebec where he was ordained a Roman Catholic priest in the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate order in 1880.

Legal worked briefly in the United States where he studied to acquire a knowledge of English. He was sent as a missionary to the Canadian northwest in 1881. He arrived at St. Albert, Alberta and was sent to carry out missionary work with the Northern Peigan Blackfoot people as well as pastoral duties in Fort Macleod, to take over from Father Constantine Scollen who had established the first mission to the Blackfoot people of Southern Alberta in 1873, along with Father Leon Doucet, near Calgary.

He was made a bishop in 1897 and bishop of St. Albert in 1902 on the death of Bishop Vital-Justin Grandin. In 1912 the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Edmonton was created and Legal was made archbishop on the 30th of November.

The town of Legal, Alberta is named in his honour.