TRURO - Eamon McCarron, 11, stood on his bicycle and watched with mixed emotions as an excavator ripped apart some of the walls of his former school.
"I think it's pretty cool but sort of sad too," he said, of the initial stages of demolition at the Alice Street School, which he attended from Primary to Grade 4.
"It's sort of hard to believe that I used to go here and I'm seeing it being torn down."
Verhagen Demolition of New Glasgow began tearing apart a smaller add-on section of the school on Thursday and is scheduled to begin demolishing the main structure early next week.
The institution, which opened in 1923, was closed following the 2007-08 school year to make way for student transfers to the new Harmony Heights Elementary School in Salmon River.
In its heyday, the school had attendance of up to 400 students, including Beverley Meekins, 57, who watched the goings on Friday with a lump in her throat.
"I'm almost crying," she said. "I went through that school, my whole family went through that school (including her three sisters, a brother and her daughter Aimee)."
Meekins started at the school during the late 1950s just as the smaller addition was being built, while her brother started his formal education in that section.
"I vaguely remember them building it," she said.
Because of her emotional attachment, Meekins wishes the town could have found a use for the old structure. But ultimately, she realizes that wasn't practical.
"A lot of mixed emotions," she said. "I'm glad to see it go because I know it's falling down. On the other hand, I hate to see it go. Why can't they do something to preserve them (old buildings)?"
Although the Town of Truro had attempted to find a use for the school, environmental testing identified the potential of PCBs in the ballast of the building's older lights and asbestos in some of the ceiling tiles and a decision was made to tear it down after the contaminents were removed.
Truro CAO Jim Langille said town council is looking at selling the property for development purposes.
Cutline:
'Pretty cool but sort of sad too.' Such was the reaction of Eamon McCarron, 11, a former student of Alice Street school as he watched an excavator demolishing the building on Friday. Harry Sullivan – Truro Daily News
