Victoria’s Sister Lucy was a nun who could find a church wherever there was a human need.
Kathleen Burton, who met the nun while working at Mount St. Mary Hospital in Victoria, recalls driving her to church and stopping for a traffic accident. Re-entering the car after getting out and helping, Burton apologized for making her late for service.
“She looked at me and said: ‘Kathleen, there is church and there is church, and you’ve just been in church. We don’t even need to go to a service now,’ ” Burton recalled.
Sister Lucy Rose DuMont, perhaps best known locally for her walking and fundraising efforts, died Saturday in Victoria Hospice at the age of 85. She was diagnosed with cancer in the fall of 2015.
DuMont was born in 1930 in Molson, Washington, and raised in Bridesville, B.C., near Osoyoos in the Okanagan. She entered the Sisters of St. Ann in 1950, taking her vows two years later. In 1957, she became a Canadian citizen.
According to the Sisters of St. Ann, DuMont studied at Seattle University and the University of Calgary, earning bachelor’s degrees in art and education, and later took further studies in theology and pastoral care.
She worked as an educator in a number of locations around B.C., including Kamloops, Prince George, Victoria and Vancouver, later turning to pastoral care and chaplain’s work in hospitals. She came to Victoria to work at Mount St. Mary Hospital.
It wasn’t until she moved into Rose Manor, an independent-living facility, that she rediscovered healthy living through walking.
Chris Coleman, a Victoria city councillor and a friend of DuMont, said the nun was in poor health by the time she was in her late 60s. Doctors suggested exercise.
“So she started with a block, then two blocks, then four blocks,” Coleman said. “By the time I met her, she was 77 and doing five kilometres a day.”
After hearing her story, Coleman made an offhand comment that the two should go for a walk someday. A few months later, DuMont called and asked if he remembered his promise to accompany her on a half-marathon.
“I was halfway through my ‘I never said that’ when I realized it was going to sound like a politician calling a Catholic nun a liar,” he recalled.
The two completed the half-marathon at a walk.
DuMont and the Mount St. Marythoners team raised hundreds of thousands of dollars over the years for the hospital and its patients.
“If she had a plan, you could either do it now or wiggle and squirm and try to get out of it before doing it later,” Coleman said.
“It was impossible to say no to Sister Lucy.”
Prayers for DuMont will be said at 7 p.m. on Sunday at Sand’s Funeral Home, 1803 Quadra St., Victoria.
Mass of the Resurrection is on Monday at 10:30 a.m. at Holy Cross Parish, 4049 Gordon Head Rd., Saanich.
