Tucked into the northern Alberta landscape along Highway 858, roughly 3.0 kilometres north of Highway 55, Plamondon sits within Lac La Biche County at an elevation of 555 metres above sea level. The community falls under Census Division No. 12 and is part of the federal riding of Fort McMurray-Cold Lake. Logging and farming form the backbone of the local economy, as they have for much of the region’s history. The hamlet offers a range of everyday amenities, including two hotels, two banks, a post office, an indoor hockey arena with artificial ice, a museum, and a large church. Two schools serve students from the wider area: École Beausejour, a francophone school focused on French-language instruction and culture, and École Plamondon School, which offers English, French immersion, and Russian language classes.
Plamondon was founded in 1908 by Joseph Plamondon and was settled largely by French-American and French Canadian pioneers, many of whom arrived from Provemont, Michigan (present-day Lake Leelanau in Leelanau County) and from French-speaking communities in Ontario. Just north of the hamlet lies Rossian, home to a community of Old Believers, a traditionalist Russian Orthodox sect whose ancestors broke from the mainstream church following the Great Schism of 1666. Most of these families relocated to the area in the mid-1970s from Woodburn, Oregon, while others arrived by way of New Zealand after fleeing Xinjiang, China following the Russian Revolution and the Chinese Communist Revolution. By the 2021 census, Plamondon recorded a population of 501 residents living in 195 of its 230 private dwellings, a notable increase of 20.4% from the 416 residents counted in 2016. The hamlet covers a land area of 9.65 square kilometres, giving it a population density of roughly 51.9 people per square kilometre.