Tlaga G̱awtlaas, New Town, will soon be home to a new childcare centre and many more houses nearby.
Designed like a Haida longhouse, the licensed childcare centre will have room for up to 49 children and be staffed by early childhood educators.
It will have 24 spaces for children of infant to toddler age, 25 spaces for children between three and five.
After years of planning by a volunteer committee and designs by architect Nancy Mackin and designer Jaada Sk’iila, Gina Mae Schubert, the centre was approved last month for $6.1 million from ChildCareBC’s New Spaces Fund and the federal Child Care Infrastructure Fund.
Construction should start this spring and finish by July 2026.
“We were lucky to be able to plan for the future,” says Patricia Moore, chief administrative officer for the Old Massett Village Council (OMVC).
While the childcare centre may not be full when it first opens, OMVC recently confirmed plans for 50 more residential lots in Tlaga G̱awtlaas, which has about 30 homes today.
Another 50 lots are planned after that.
“That is going to bring a lot of families into the community,” Moore said.
The childcare centre itself may also be a draw.
Moore said lack of childcare has been a stumbling block for many families who want to move home or start lives here.
“We have fresh air and very low traffic and the lifestyle is actually wonderful,” she said.
“But it’s amazing how not having some of these services really deters people from living here.”
Open to families across northern Haida Gwaii, the OMVC childcare centre will open not long after a 24-space childcare centre that is now under construction opens by the Daaxiigan Sk’adáa Née K-to-12 school in MassetMoore said Old Massett hasn’t had a childcare centre since her own children, now in their 20s, were young enough to go.
“I think it’s really impacted how this community runs,” she said.
Economically, she said childcare makes it far easier for parents to work, train or study and the lack of it is one reason for the pretty high poverty level in Old Massett.
Moore said it’s also been a barrier for nurses, doctors and other healthcare professionals who want to move to northern Haida Gwaii, where healthcare staffing is an ongoing problem.
“Here, we are fortunate that we have family,” she added. “But there is only so much family to watch so many kids.”
Moore said the B.C. Aboriginal Childcare Society was super helpful in helping plan how the childcare centre will run.
The centre will offer the Aboriginal Headstart Childcare program and OMVC also hopes to offer a Xaad Kil language nest. There are plans for before- and after-school care at a nearby building as well.
To staff the childcare centre, OMVC is partnering with Coast Mountain College to run a two-year ECE training program in Old Massett.
The course will have room for 15 students and ten have expressed interest so far. Bursaries are available from the BC Ministry of Education and Childcare for ECE students as well as for working ECEs and working ECEs seeking specialized training.
Moore also hopes local people who already have their ECE will consider returning to childcare once the new centre is built.
An amenities building and a kitchen building will be built beside the childcare centre.
Along with the playground, they will be shared by families living in the secure transition houses planned next door.
“We thought it was important to put these projects together,” Moore said.
Designer Gina Mae Schubert said the childcare building will have some traditional features of a Haida longhouse, as will the fronts of the transition houses.
“That was important to us, to keep that tradition in our village,” she said.
After the landscape architect suggested a sunken-ship structure in the playground, Schubert suggested someone from Old Massett build one like the wood fishing schooners made by her great-grandfather, Captain Andrew Brown, a Haida shipbuilder and argillite carver.
“It inspires the children to say, ‘Hey, I can be more than one thing, right?'” she said. “I don’t have to just study science. I don’t have to just study artwork.”
Inside, the new childcare centre will get natural light from rows of windows up high as well as regular windows in the main space.
Schubert also designed a tall section of framed glass in the centre of the far wall — a place to display a permanent work of Haida art, but also a place for kids to put up their own art for a while.
But the most striking thing in the new childcare centre might be the storage room.
While sketching cubbies for storing kids’ jackets and things, Schubert was reminded of a bentwood box.
She redesigned the storage room so the whole thing resembles a painted, 14-foot tall bentwood box. The cubbies that line the walls inside will be painted in traditional Haida colours, including red and turquoise.
“It’s such a celebration,” said Schubert, speaking about the whole childcare building.
“It will bring more sustainability to our people, and make things flow better.”