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Bentley good Samaritans replace roof of local pensioner

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Pictured above is a crewmember from All Good Construction of Bentley

Staff reporter

Although it’s been several months since a hailstorm tore through Bentley on Aug. 10, there are still signs of the damage caused all over town, but fortunately for one elderly woman whose roof was pummelled during the storm, many friends, neighbours - and even a few strangers - came to the rescue.

“A couple of days after the big hailstorm I was chatting with a neighbour. I asked her if she had had her property adjusted yet and she said no because she didn’t have any insurance,” said Colleen McNaught who kick-started the repair work. “She’s a senior in the community who’s lived here all her life and she didn’t want to be identified. I had spoken to a number of other people and thought it would be much easier to go through her church.”

Through those efforts, McNaught found herself discussing the situation with Rev. Ray Goodship of the Bentley United Church, and that’s when things really started to move forward.

“Myself and my partner, Rick Pirart, who lives in Bentley, heard that the elderly woman needed her roof replaced, but couldn’t afford it. So Rick and I drove by her place and had a look at it, and it was in awful shape,” said Kent Cadman, who also lived with his family in Bentley for several years before relocating closer to Rimbey in 2005.

Cadman also discussed the plight of the woman with Rev. Goodship and agreed that if the church congregation or the homeowner could afford new shingles, Cadman’s company All Good Construction would be happy to install them and donate the cost of labour.

In fact, Cadman said the reason he formed the company with Pirart, who have both worked in Bentley for 11 years, was a direct result of the hailstorm.

“Actually, the impetus was the hailstorm and that’s what drove us to form the company. We’ve done a lot of work in the area and we thought it would be nice to give something back to the community,” Cadman said, adding now was the time to replace the aging and dilapidated roof. “You’ve got to be careful because you don’t want to be shingling when the weather is too cold. We’ve had such an odd fall that it allowed us to go ahead and get the job completed.”

And while it may have taken his crew only one day to finish the job, half of that was spent removing several layers of old shingles.

“The roof kind of looked like a curly perm,” added McNaught. “It was already bad and after the hail, it was much worse.”

Joining the partners on the job were employees Melvin Budgell, Eric McDonnell, Dusty Lutwick and Connor Beavis. As an added bonus, Rev. Goodship was also on hand on the clean-up detail and was certainly not going to allow the crew to go away empty-handed.

“They were very nice. They had a beautiful lasagna meal for us at lunchtime over at the church and it was just great,” said Cadman, adding that things may have been different in a different location. “On this level, I think a bigger company in a bigger centre might be able to make some kind of a donation to a charitable cause, but this is a little more personal than that.”

Of note, Cadman said he and Pirart chose the name All Good Construction for their new venture because they frequently use the phrase around the jobsite. But in this particular case, replacing an aging and beaten roof for an elderly pensioner just before Christmas who couldn’t afford insurance, is indeed, all good.