Father Patrick Mecredi was an important figure in the Fort McMurray area. Born in 1904 into the Athabasa Chipewyan First Nation community, Mecredi was sent to the Holy Angels residential school at Fort Chipewyan at the age of seven. He left there following the eighth grade in order to go trapping and hunting with his father. Mercredi went back to school several years later, in 1923. In 1928 he attended the Oblate Fathers’ novitiate in Manitoba in order to train to become a priest. On August 15 1934, Mecredi was ordained in Fort Chipewyan, becoming the second First Nations minister in Alberta.