This Alta. general store comprises a convenience store, post office, ATB branch, hair salon and courier depot
BENALTO, Alta. — Some things about the traditions of a community general store never change.
“We’re a meeting place, a gathering place,” says Karen Turner-Padley, referring to the Benalto General Store.
She adds that some people jokingly refer to it as the mini-mall of Benalto, and for good reason. All together under one roof in a bright open space of 1,600 sq.ft., is a convenience store, Canada Post outlet, Alberta Treasury Branch banking agency, hairdressing salon, video rental store, and courier depot.
Turner-Padley and her first husband, Alan Turner, who died in 2002, bought the store in 1990.
“It was kind of by accident,” she says.
They were scouting businesses for sale for a relative. The Benalto General Store in the central Alberta hamlet had been shut down for about 18 months.
“We just fell in love with the community. Our boys were in Grades 1 and 4 at the time. The skating rink was right across. The school was a block away. We wanted them to have this kind of life,” Turner-Padley says.
So she left her early childhood development career in Red Deer to run the Benalto General Store. Alan was able to carry on with his truck driving job from their new location.
She married Richard Padley in 2004. Padley immigrated from England where he and his late wife had also run a store.
“He knew what he was getting into” Turner-Padley says. “He brings the mail in every morning, sorts it and delivers it to the boxes.”
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Padley is also the handyman.
“This old building needs maintenance,” Turner-Padley says.
Turner-Padley manages the store, the post office and the bank.
Shelly Lambert works four days a week in her one-chair hair salon called Country Clips, which occupies a partially walled corner of the store.
“I’ve been hairdresser here for 16 years.”
She refers to the store as “the hub of the community.”
The building was initially constructed as a bank almost a century ago. When the bank closed, a grocery store set up shop in the building, in about 1924.
The business remained primarily a grocery store for the next 65 years but underwent numerous changes of ownership and building modifications.
“The store had been a full fledged grocery store until we bought it,” says Turner-Padley. “They sold dry goods, groceries, fresh vegetables, meats, even clothes.”
She says that was before the nearby highway made it easier for people to travel.
Today, she says she can’t compete with “the big grocery stores” in Eckville, Sylvan Lake and Red Deer.
The store’s grocery items are what she calls a “smattering of this and that;” things like canned soups, pastas and sauces, some baking, dairy items, snack foods, and dry goods like tissues and toilet paper.
Many of the usual convenience store items are also here, such as newspapers and coffee.
It’s the variety of services and hours that keeps the business viable, she says, particularly the post office and banking.
The Benalto General Store is open from 9:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. Monday to Saturday.
“It brings a lot of customers in because we’re open so much longer. People know they can come get their mail or do their banking all those hours,” Turner-Padley says.
