A group of neighbours in Toronto joined forces to build a new wheelchair ramp for a 95-year-old man in a heartwarming display of kindness.

Cathy Marro lives next door to the senior man and his son, who both wished to remain anonymous, in the city’s Bathurst Manor neighbourhood. She said in the beginning of May, the senior’s son hired a local handyman to build a ramp over the front steps of his home so he could wheel him inside when he returned from the hospital the next day.

When she and her husband came home that evening, Marro said she was shocked to see a makeshift ramp with a steep incline and no railing resting over her neighbour’s five front steps.

“We were shocked,” she recalled to CTVNews.ca on Wednesday. “I don’t even think you can walk on that, let alone put a 95 year old in a wheelchair on it.”

Marro said she and her husband Alessandro tried contacting the city to see what could be done about the ramp, but they were told there was nothing they could do because it was on private property. She said her husband also tried calling the handyman to express dissatisfaction with the ramp, but he was told this is what the customer had requested.

CTVNews.ca spoke with the handyman who built the ramp and he said the senior man’s son had asked him to just quickly build a temporary ramp that would allow him to wheel his father into the house the next day.

The handyman insisted that he repeatedly told the customer the ramp would be unsafe to use and he just did what was asked of him.

After a few weeks, Marro said she decided to post a photo of it in a private neighbourhood Facebook group called Bathurst Manor Action Group. The post immediately created a stir among the group’s members.

“It went completely nuts,” she said. “People were upset.”

Josh Pearson was one of those people who saw Marro’s post last Wednesday as he was browsing the Facebook group. Although he doesn’t know the senior man who lives at the home with the ramp, Pearson said he only lives two blocks away from him so he went over to see it for himself.

“It was just completely unusable and unsafe,” he said during a telephone interview with CTVNews.ca on Saturday.

‘A beautiful experience’

In an effort to help, Pearson said he went back on the Facebook group to announce that he was going to build the man a new ramp and any volunteers would be welcome.

“I’m not a contractor, I’m not a carpenter. I’m just handy and I know how to build things,” he said. “I just said ‘Hey, let’s just build him a new one. We’ll build him a proper one.’”

On Friday, Pearson said he went to Home Depot Yorkdale and explained the senior man’s situation to the assistant manager there. He said the manager told him the company would cover the cost of all of the materials and deliver it to them.

“I was hoping for 10 or 15 per cent off, just something. I certainly wasn’t expecting that. So that was amazing,” Pearson said.

On Monday afternoon, Pearson and a few other volunteers from the contracting company KB&B Restorations as well as Marro’s husband and brother met at the senior man’s home and constructed a new safe ramp with a gradual incline and railing.

“It was nice, a beautiful experience,” Marro said of the day. “It honestly restored my faith in humanity. It really did.”

Pearson said he regularly volunteers and was just happy to help in any way that he could.

“This is just one of those things,” he said. “I saw it and I thought ‘I can fix it… so why wouldn’t I?’”

Although they declined an interview, Marro said the man and his son were “very grateful” for the community support.

In fact, Marro said the son called her and her husband to let them know he had taken his father out for a walk the day after it was built.

“It worked out well,” she said. “There’s a lot of good in the world still.”