Tributes poured in this week from the many students, immigrants, and those less fortunate whose lives were touched by one of St. Albert’s leading advocates for literacy.
Cheryl Janice Dumont (born Post) died at the Westview Health Centre hospice in Stony Plain from breast cancer April 12, 2025. She was 76.
Dumont was a well-known figure in St. Albert who served as a St. Albert Public trustee from 2010 to 2021, board member with the St. Albert Housing Society from 2014 to 2023, board member (later executive director) with the St. Albert Further Education Association from 2011 to 2023, and volunteer with many other groups. She received the King Charles III Coronation Medal last March.
Tributes to Dumont poured in as news of her death spread.
On Facebook, Sen. Kristopher Wells described Dumont as “a pillar and champion of our community” whose contributions were now woven into the very fabric of St. Albert.
“Rest with the angels, for you are one of them,” he wrote.
St. Albert Mayor Cathy Heron said in council chambers April 15 that Dumont was “one of the most compassionate and accepting people that St. Albert has ever known,” and would be deeply missed by the community.
“The world would be a better place with more Cheryls in it,” Heron said of Dumont in an interview.
Dumont’s husband, Marshall Dumont, said Dumont was a loving, caring person who always wanted to help those less fortunate.
“She always wanted to help people better themselves.”
Charismatic champion
Dumont grew up in Cornwall, Ont., and was educated at George Brown College, Marshall said. She got excellent grades, regularly scoring in the top five per cent of her class.
“She really wanted to become a teacher,” he said, but ended up working as an insurance agent from about 1985 to 2010.
Dumont married and had two children with Don Oldfield, later divorcing him. Marshall said he started hanging out with Dumont in 1985 and married her in 1989 just prior to joining the military.
“Cheryl said, ‘If you’re going to join the military, we need to get married,’ so I proposed to her,” he said.
Dumont and her family moved to St. Albert in 1996 and adopted Summer Rose Dumont in 1997.
“I had Summer for a week and then I went to Bosnia for six months on deployment,” Marshall recalled.
Caitlin Hartford, 39, said Dumont served as a sort of den mother for her and many other kids on the military base where she grew up in the 1990s. Dumont encouraged all of them to seek education and to think well of themselves, and directly inspired her to become an author and lifelong volunteer.
“She felt like home wherever she was,” Hartford said.
Many people the Gazette interviewed for this piece spoke of Dumont’s uncanny ability to rally others to community causes.
“I got sucked into doing things I never wanted to do, but you’d do it because she was so committed,” Marshall said.
Dumont was a force of nature who knew all the people and could pull them together to get stuff done, said friend Willy Grant. Dumont simply did so much for the community that you couldn’t help but step up if she asked for help.
“No one could say ‘no’ to Cheryl.”
Community leader
Former Greater St. Albert Catholic trustee Jacquie Hansen called Dumont a great advocate for youth, families, education, inclusivity, and Indigenous rights at the local and provincial levels.
“I think what drove her was the tremendous empathy she had for people,” Hansen said, and her determination to make things right.
“We should be doing better for people.”
Dumont was courageous and would take on controversial tasks because they were the right things to do, said former St. Albert Public trustee Joe Demko. One such task was her 2013 motion to have the board create its first standalone sexual orientation and gender policy. It passed 4–1, making the board the second in Alberta to have such a policy.
“If she believed it was good for kids and good for the community, she would do her best to bring it forward,” Demko said.
Dumont created the Newcomer Connections Program at St. Albert Further Ed in 2021. When dozens of Ukrainians fleeing Russia’s invasion came to St. Albert in 2022, Dumont co-ordinated the city’s non-profits to find these newcomers food, shelter, and language support, said Suzan Krecsy, executive director of the St. Albert Food Bank.
Dumont was a relentless advocate for literacy, and oversaw the opening of Further Ed’s family literacy storefront in St. Albert Centre in 2022. Marshall said Dumont would typically read about five or six books at a time and could somehow keep all the plots straight.
Further Ed chairperson Ahmad Sanni said Dumont never really left Further Ed despite retiring as executive director in 2023, and was volunteering there while using a walker as late as last February. She helped tonnes of people get the skills they needed to find work, and made Further Ed the major force it is in St. Albert today.
Dumont may have been shorter than him, but Marshall said he spent much of his life in the shadow of her community achievements.
“She was always bigger than the world,” he said.
“To the day I die, I will never be able to forget this lady.”
Dumont is survived by her step-father Maurice Cote; siblings Karen Otibu and Rick Post; husband Marshall; children Michele Janes, Brad Oldfield, and Summer Rose Dumont; seven grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren. She was predeceased by her parents Charles Post and Janet Campbell.
Marshall said Dumont was to be cremated, with a celebration of her life scheduled for 2 p.m. May 3, 2025, at the Connelly–McKinley Funeral Home in St. Albert. In lieu of flowers, well-wishers were asked to donate to the 2025 Dumont Family Literacy Fund via the St. Albert Community Foundation.
