THE DE WINTON COMMUNITY HALL GETS A FACELIFT!
De Winton Hall has long been a cornerstone of our community, bringing neighbours together for generations of events, gatherings, and celebrations. In 1996, a devastating fire destroyed the original hall, but through the determination and support of the community, it was rebuilt—stronger and more vibrant than ever. Now, nearly 30 years later, our beloved hall continues to serve us well, but it is time to update, replace and fix some our infrastructure.
Through the hard work of the Board of Directors —we have secured several grants and additional funds to move forward with a number of critical infrastructure improvements which will cost us just excess of $200,000. It is important to note that we received support from volunteers in the community who helped secure quotes, tracked down venders and other important jobs which helped our Board. We are very grateful for their time and effort. Many, many hours of work went into creating presentations, creating grants, securing estimates for the services and presenting our needs to various support groups. We are so pleased to advise this hard work and commitment has provided us with funds that will enable us to move forward with our critical projects as outlined below:
1) Roof replacement
Our roof was showing its age and was in dire need of an overhaul. Over the past year, particularly as we lived through an unusual rainy period last June and July, board members and our Office Manager, got called out at all times to grab buckets and mops to clean up the latest leak. We did many patch repairs but the answer was obvious. We needed a new roof. As you can image a new roof is very expensive for a non-profit such as ourselves and we took on the challenge to secure additional funds to make this renovation occur.
We are so pleased to confirm we received funding covering a large portion of our costs from CFEP (Community Facility Enhancement Program), the Dunbow Recreational Board and a much appreciated discount from our roofing company First Class Roofing and Renovations, Inc.
Our new roof has now been installed and just in time as we are enduring the early rains in June. A big thank you to the volunteers who put in countless hours planning, researching, grant writing and doing the post construction garden and grounds clean up.
2) Furnaces, Boiler and Air Conditioning
30 years down the road and our very outdated furnace and boiler system is beginning to fall apart. This component is critical to our operations. Without the boiler we would have no hot water and our facility would have to shut down in accordance with Alberta Health Care requirements. We must have hot water for our kitchen and for our other operations. Through the mastery of our President Mike Kosinec and our Officer Manager Matt Coveart, we have held our furnace and boiler together with love and buttons, but the time has come to deal with this major beast. Because it is not a high efficacy system, we were incurring addition operating costs that are no longer justifiable.
In addition, one of our major sources of revenue is the rental income generated from our weddings. Unfortunately, over the years, we have lost a few potential rentals because we do not have air conditioning. As a result, we looked into what the additional expense would be to include this feature as we update our facility and we are thrilled to confirm that we will be adding air conditioning to our facility.
Again, we had many helping hands securing quotes, putting together presentations and applying for grants where ever possible. We are so grateful and appreciative to the Dunbow Recreation Board who have provided a grant which will cover roughly a significant portion of the budgeted cost to replace this system.
3) Our new Road Signs
Getting our information out to our community is an essential task for this Board. We want to ensure we are meeting the needs of our community and enjoying time together as a community. Although we use various forms of media, we have found that our signage boards have been very effective over the years. Just like our infrastructure, our signage was aged and dated and overdue for an overhaul.
Thanks to our Communication Director Mia Staysco for taking the lead, with our volunteers, to redesign our signage and to the Dunbow Recreation Board who helped us with a generous contribution towards the upgrade. You will be seeing our newly designed signs up and around as we get the last of the bugs worked out and get them out throughout our community. Again over 40 hours of volunteer labour plus designing, planning and grant writing went into this project. THANK YOU!!!
4) Rebuilding our wrap around decking.
A couple of years ago at our famous annual Canada Day Breakfast, we had an unfortunate incident when one of our long-standing members tripped on a protruding step and injured herself. As we reviewed the incident at the next Board meeting, we were concerned and felt we needed to fix the problem. As with all things, it wasn’t that simple and what had initially appeared to be a quick fix turned into a major project. We couldn’t simply remove the step, we had to rebuild, re-enforce and re-cover the entire deck. Again, our amazing board stepped into action and applied for grants and were thrilled to receive a grant from the Dunbow Recreation Board which supported this project for a significant portion of the cost. The project was completed in the spring of 2025 and the feedback was outstanding. It was a grand success that has received many compliments from our community and our rental users.
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