by Richard Gleeson
Northern News Services

NNSL (June 04/97) - "The memories, my God," said Susie Edmonds, wistfully.

"I used to sit her in a bassinet over there," she said, referring to daughter Gli, now 22. Edmonds noted, with a little pride, Gli was conceived and born in one of the shacks near the end of the road with no name.

Memories are almost all that remains of what was once a community in the truest sense of the word -- something closer to an extended family than a neighborhood.

"The first night I came to Yellowknife I slept in the Greenhouse," recalled John Alexander.

Alexander was among a dozen former Woodyard residents who gathered in front of the shack known as the Greenhouse Monday evening.

Word was out that it was slated for demolition the following day. It was a chance for one last get-together in front of a building, in a place that for all recalls a level of freedom no longer available in Yellowknife.

The city said last week it owns the building and the land the building sits upon. But acting senior administrator for the city, Brian Chambers, said no such plan is in the works.

"There's no demolition planned for today or tomorrow, for that matter, or that I know of, in the future," said Chambers on Tuesday.

Though today it is dwarfed by a modern home not 10 metres away, the Greenhouse has successfully defied destruction for decades.

Alexander noted it was slated for demolition when he moved in, in 1979. It was still standing in 1985, when Mark Bogan lived there.

Two years ago, the threat escalated into an argument of ownership that ended with police laying charges against a member of the Rocher family, which owns property and several of the modern homes in the area.

Supporters of the Woodyard have waged a losing battle against the city, which regards the shacks as "unauthorized housing," for years.

The pleas to preserve it have slowed down, but not stopped, assimilation of the area into the conventional way of life those at the gathering were once able to turn away from, if only for a few years.