'There's my childhood': Yellowknifer watches demolition of daycare that helped raise her

Camilla MacEachern doesn't remember taking her first steps, but she remembers the building she took them in fondly.

She watched a demolition crew tear it down on Dec. 18.

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"It's very surreal," she said as she watched 70-year-old building along 51 Street in downtown Yellowknife crumble.

"There's my childhood in, it looks like a matchstick box," she said. "[I'm] feeling like I'm living in a bit of an identity crisis, out with the old and in with the new, which isn't necessarily a good thing at all."

Built in 1947, the building served as an RCMP detachment until 1970, then it housed the YWCA before becoming a daycare.

That business moved earlier this year, and the building was left unoccupied until Tuesday's teardown.

MacEachern says she attended the daycare before she entered kindergarten. Her brother and sister followed in her footsteps.

"I remember bringing my siblings to daycare and having to sneak off so they wouldn't cry when they saw my mom and I leave," she said.

"I can still actually remember the smell, the smell of that very distinct bleach and children."

MacEachern said she's surprised the building has lasted as long as it has. 

"It seems to be a trend in the city these days that we're losing a lot of our historical buildings, which is really too bad," she said.

'Growing trend' of historic buildings disappearing

Ryan Silke, a local historian, agrees. He's noticed a "growing trend" of old, historic buildings disappearing, including the building that formerly housed the Fat Fox coffee shop, which came down earlier this year.

"It's just the nature of Yellowknife where redevelopment is always so attractive on property and the heritage value is often ignored," he said.

"That's really quite a shame because I think Yellowknife would be better in preserving some of those character neighbourhoods."

Silke would have liked to have seen the building renovated and preserved.

"This would have been a perfect example where you could have gave an old building a new use and also preserved the streetscape in a way."

As MacEachern watched the old building come down, her eyes turned to another historic landmark down the street: the Gold Range.

"They better not do anything with that," she said.

With files from Loren McGinnis.