A better bath at last thanks to Western Sales

EAGLE STAFF

Bath time has gotten much better for residents of a Wheatland Regional Centre group home in Rosetown.

Participants living at the centre’s Biggar House, in the 300 block of Sixth Street East, are enjoying a new hot tub, courtesy of Western Sales.

Michelle Morris, the supervisor at Biggar House, convinced senior executives with the John Deere implement dealership to provide a grant for the tub and its installation, Wheatland executive director Lana Hamilton said.

June Prehodchenko shows off the new hot tub at Wheatland Regional Centre’s Biggar House, recently provided by Western Sales. It replaces a conventional tub that some residents had trouble climbing into. Photo by Ian MacKay

The tub “has enriched” residents’ “lives so much,” Morris said. “We’ve been struggling to get a bath in there for about 13 years. Funding just hasn’t been there.”

“People have mobility issues” so the old tub “didn’t work for them,” Hamilton said. “It was dangerous and difficult.”

The new, walk-in tub has a door on its side and “a bunch of features,” she said. “You can have aromatherapy; there are jets; you can have music playing,” she said.

People can improve their mental health and well-being by sitting in the warm water and enjoy the experience, Hamilton added.

Morris explained to sales manager Jason Hintze “how important this was for the residents of the group home, then I put some paperwork together and (Western Sales) made it happen,” she said.

Workers gutted the washroom area where the previous standard tub stood, the new tub was installed over a day and a half and connected to electricity that runs its jets.

The leading executives with Western Sales - McGrath, Carl Persson and Hintze - “are absolutely a godsend, not only to Rosetown but to all the other communities around it,” Morris said. She also singled out finance manager Henry Pretorius, saying, “If it wasn’t for him, we couldn’t have had the accounts paid.”

She attended the company’s Christmas party with her husband, Gary Morris, a senior technician with Western Sales, and spoke to McGrath, who suggested she take the request to Hintze, she said. She talked with him two weeks later “and this is what happened,” Morris said.

The tub, its installation and electrical work by Long and Son cost about $20,000, said Hamilton, who joined Wheatland in August. She grew up on a farm near Dodsland and moved to Calgary, then Winnipeg, where she spent 21 years.