Workers say goodbye to an almost-empty Ontario Science Centre as repairs get underway [Video]

TORONTO — As the sun shone on an unusually warm day at the end of October, Emma Meadley Dunphy took one final, emotional stroll through the Ontario Science Centre.

The centre’s volunteer co-ordinator wandered the cavernous spaces trying to soak it all in, before workers had to be out of the building by midday on Oct. 31.

“I kept running into lots of different people who were doing it themselves,” she said. “Everybody was clearly having a moment in each of the spaces.”

It had been a furious few months of packing up and sending countless truckloads of stuff to storage facilities in numerous locations.

A few things too difficult to move were still in the building. Questions hung in the air, too. Did it really need to be this way? Would they ever come back?

Ontario officials announced the abrupt and permanent closure of the science centre in late …