A year later, impact of deadly Whitehorse house explosion still resonates

Linda Gould still mourns the life she had up until a year ago. 

In the early hours of Nov. 14, 2023, Dave Gould was still next to her  — the love of her life and partner of nearly 40 years, with whom she'd built a large family and network of friends. Their cozy, custom-built home in Whitehorse's Riverdale neighbourhood witnessed many a birthday party, Christmas dinner and even the couple's wedding. 

It was just before 5:30 that morning when Linda woke up and walked to the bathroom. While she would normally sit on the edge of the bed after getting up — a habit she picked up after a surgery a few years ago — that morning, for reasons she's still not sure of, she immediately put her feet on the floor. 

Linda was standing in the bathroom and wondering why she'd gone in there when there was an earth-shattering bang and the ceiling fell in on her. She escaped the bathroom and then her house, barefoot and in shock, but physically unscathed.

Her husband, however, was still sleeping in their bed when the explosion tore through the bedroom. He died in the blast. 

It's a reality that, a year later, Linda said is still hard to process.  

"He did not deserve to die like that. And we didn't even get to say goodbye," she said.

"My heart's broken and I don't know if it'll ever heal."

Officials still silent on cause

What Linda survived was the house next door exploding, with a force so great that it registered on Earthquake Canada's Whitehorse seismogram. The blast propelled doorknobs and wooden boards into surrounding homes and trees, and sent insulation and documents so high in the air that they were still raining down minutes later. 

The explosion at 17 Bates Cres. reduced that house to little more than an unrecognizable pile of oversized matchsticks. 

The next-most-seriously-damaged home was the Goulds' place, next door at 15 Bates Cres. One whole side of the house was blasted off.

It was the same side the Goulds' bedroom was on. 

Dave Gould was the only person killed that morning — a tragedy but, in some ways, a near-miracle given the scale of the explosion and damage left behind. 

The owner of 17 Bates, Tim Preston, was inside his home that morning and pulled from the wreckage alive. 

Preston did not respond to an interview request for this story. The Yukon RCMP announced this week that he was being charged with two counts under the territory's Gas Burning Devices Act related to not having permits in place to install or alter "an appliance, house piping, a vent or a gas installation." 

The RCMP said the investigation was "highly complex and technical" but have otherwise remained mum about what happened. 

However, as investigators started combing through the debris field last November, whispers began in the community that the explosion was caused by propane, commonly used as a heat source. 

Sandi Coleman lives a few blocks away and recalled being shaken awake that morning, then running into the street where neighbours in pyjamas and housecoats were all trying to figure out what happened. 

Black silt and bits of paper began floating down around them, she said, and they picked the pages up and read Tim Preston's letterhead address. On Bates Crescent, there was the smell of propane, and debris hanging from trees. She remembered walking on pieces of broken insulation and seeing neighbours sitting on front porches, visibly in shock.

"I'm surprised to hear it's been a year," she said.

Homes still under repair

While some homeowners wiped local store shelves clean of propane gas detectors in the days following, others closer to the scene of the explosion had a grimmer task ahead — evaluating, with winter already setting in, whether their homes were salvageable. 

Michael McIsaac and his wife, Josefine McIsaac, bought the house across the street from 17 Bates in 2017, putting hours of work into renovating the space to make it feel like their own. The explosion shattered their drywall and not only destroyed their windows, but warped the frames too. 

The couple had to move out while contractors spent the following months ripping out walls and appliances to assess the damage. The McIsaacs were only able to go back to take a look this summer.

"It was a sad experience, going back into our home," Michael said. 

"Seeing the bare-bones house — it was a bit unsettling."

Besides the financial costs, Michael said the experience has taken a mental toll too. While therapy has helped, he said he still does things like take note of where the propane tank is when he's entering a new building. The events of that morning a year ago also still manifest in different ways.

"There's still times where you know, you're sleeping at night and your house makes a sound or the snow falls off the roof and you wake up quite abruptly thinking that, you know, maybe something bad has happened," he said. 

Michael said he and his wife — along with the baby boy they welcomed this year — are expecting to be able to move back in sometime in 2025. He expects that moment will be bittersweet.

"It'll be nice to have our place again… I'm hopeful that we can also support each other to make Bates [Cres.] feel like our little safe, quiet community again," he said.

Linda, for her part, had what was left of her own home at 15 Bates torn down and later sold the property. The thought of re-building on top of 40 years' worth of memories, she said, and in the same spot where her husband died, was too painful.

Most of the Goulds' belongings were destroyed in the explosion, though family members managed to salvage a few pictures and her diamond wedding ring.

'There hasn't been a resolution to this thing'

Bates Crescent was quiet on a recent Sunday. There are now two empty lots, blanketed in snow, where the Preston and Gould homes used to be. 

Windows on several homes remained boarded up, and three adjacent homes were still wrapped in plastic sheeting. Besides the McIsaac home, at least two other houses in the area were sitting unoccupied, too. 

But the explosion's impact resonates beyond Bates. 

Denis Rolls lives on the periphery of the damage.

"We were fortunate," he said.

After the explosion, his neighbours discussed having a party to bring the community together. It didn't happen, but Rolls said everybody stayed in touch with each other. The city came door-to-door to offer free counselling. The police interviewed everybody, as well.

Riverdale resident Rick Griffiths, who lives a little bit further from Bates, was among the people who flocked to Home Hardware the day after the explosion, managing to nab the last propane gas detector on the shelf. 

He went back later for a second unit and installed both on the ground floor of his home — one in the living room next to the propane fireplace and another next to the furnace in the garage. 

He said his neighbours did the same thing.

"I still have this little niggling thing in my mind about propane, because there hasn't been a resolution to this thing," Griffiths said last weekend. "It just creates a little bit of unease."

A 'beautiful life'

Linda said she's recently been trying to bring some joy back into her life, because that's what her husband would have wanted. She spent last summer in Dawson City, Dave's hometown and where they have a second property. While it was "very, very difficult," she said it was also nice to be able to have a place where there was still a sense of home, and to hold Dave's clothes that still smelled like him. 

More than 150 people came to a celebration of life for Dave later that summer; Linda's speech made people laugh and cry as she honoured the "beautiful life" her husband lived, and the chapters he never got to close. 

Dave, at 77, was still working his mining claims, Linda said, and also loved travelling with her and going on cruises. He was excited to become a great-grandfather, a role he would have excelled at; he was already a trusted confidant and mentor for his children, grandchildren and friends.

Reconciling what could have been with what never will be has been painful. 

"Up until probably a week ago, I was in a lot of stress because I did not know how I could move on with my life… I was scared," Linda said. 

While she's temporarily living in a condo on the outskirts of downtown, Linda said she'll soon be moving to a new property in the city's Mary Lake neighbourhood, where she'll be closer to family and also have a garden to tend to. It's one more step, she said, in the long journey of rebuilding her life; it's what Dave would have wanted.

"I'm just trying to get back to the roots of life, getting my faith back and humanity," she said. "And it's hard. That's all I can say."

Linda said that her last night with her husband was a quiet one; while Dave was excited for his nephew's birthday party the next day, the couple had also received the news that one of their best friends was going to be taken off life support.  

Before going to bed, they had a chat about how much they were going to miss their friend, and Dave gave her a hug.

"His eyes were just kind of looking at me," Linda recalled, "and he just said, you know, 'Hun, we don't know what tomorrow's gonna bring.'"