Monday's opening of the new, $8.1-million ambulance station at the Alaska Highway and Two Mile Hill was so much more than the christening of a new building for Shandell McCarthy and Marco Paquet.

It was an extremely emotional day as they remembered their toddler son, Brennan, who died three years ago.

As they tearfully remembered their son during presentations at the opening, they praised the daily work of paramedics and the government for building the new station in a more central location where paramedics can be closer to all Whitehorse call sources.

The eight minutes McCarthy spent waiting for an ambulance while her son was in distress seemed like forever, though it was still a minute under the national average of ambulance wait times.

As McCarthy recalled the day, she said it began as a rather typical Sunday – getting chores done around her Takhini home, cleaning up toys and dancing with Brennan as well as getting things ready for the week ahead.

"I set about vacuuming and mopping the floor and placed Brennan in his high chair,” she recalled. "Brennan had only recently learned how to walk, and so keeping (him still) for any amount of time proved to be a challenge.

"He wanted down, and it didn't matter if the floor was still wet; Brennan could be very convincing. And so I got down on my hands and knees and dried the floor by hand with paper towels and made sure there was nothing left on the floor.”

Smiling as she remembered how convincing the tyke could be, McCarthy went on to remember her son running around the partition in the middle of the house, something he loved to do.

He had his own cupboard to play in too, but because McCarthy was doing the dishes at that point, he couldn't use it. She opened another drawer below the stove, checking for "anything that might hurt him.

"I saw nothing,” she said. "I turned around and started doing the dishes and, in just a second ... I heard him start to cry like I had never heard him cry before.”

After a short pause and some tears, McCarthy continued.

"It sent chills up my back. By the time I turned around, he was gasping for breath; I was trying desperately to recall what to do from a first aid class I had taken 11 years before and recalled the head tilt jaw manoeuvre.

"I did manage to scoop out a piece of hardened macaroni. I immediately turned him over and started patting him hard on the back and screaming for help.”

A neighbour who was also a volunteer firefighter with first aid training jumped over the fence and tried to expel the object from Brennan's throat while McCarthy called 911.

Brennan started turning blue, and "it was a long eight minutes before the ambulance showed up.”

By the time paramedics had arrived, Brennan had taken his last breath.

"He was in full cardiac arrest by the time they got him into the ambulance despite efforts to provide manual respiration,” McCarthy said.

"We got to the hospital where they continued to try to resuscitate him to no avail.

"My son was pronounced dead at 4:20 p.m., a mere 55 minutes after I had hand-dried the floor.”

There were reasons, she said, for sharing her family's story yesterday: so that people know it only takes a second for an accident to occur that "will forever change the landscape of your life.”

McCarthy said that while she had taken first aid training, she hadn't gotten re-certified, adding that could have made a difference.

It took two years to get up the courage to take a first aid class, she said.

She was thanking her co-workers and friends who joined her at the class and the instructor for their support and understanding when she broke down during the section on how to expel an object from an infant and adult.

"Nine minutes, that's the national average for ambulance response times, so eight minutes was better than average, but it still felt like forever,” she said.

"It's important to have first aid skills so that in those moments you are able to provide the necessary and possibly life-saving efforts, possibly for your loved ones while those eight or nine minutes are ticking by.”

Knowing how important it was to improve response times, McCarthy and Marco started a petition and lured 1,000 signatures supporting the building of a new station. Afterward, they met with then-Community Services minister Archie Lang about the issue.

It came after an initial proposal for an ambulance station on nearby Range Road was met with contention from nearby residents over the increased noise and traffic they argued the station would bring.

McCarthy thanked Lang – who retired from politics in 2011 – for the role he played in the development of the new station.

She then said the station is a positive step, but that more needs to be done, including providing a secondary access to Whitehorse General Hospital.

"With the installation of the new traffic lights (at Lewes Boulevard and Hospital Road), I believe that life-saving minutes may be taken away if this only access is blocked,” she said.

"And so I will take this moment to issue a request to our current premier (Darrell Pasloski) and our current minister of Community Services (Brad Cathers) to begin taking steps to ensure that the minutes gained through the addition of this new emergency response centre are not lost because of this limited access to the hospital.”

McCarthy then issued a call to drivers to follow the rules of the road and pull over to the right and come to a complete stop when they hear sirens.

Too often, ambulances are forced to slow down because it's not clear what other drivers – who don't pull over or only slow down for emergency vehicles – will do next.

"Think about it like this: it could be your loved ones' life in the balance,” she said. "Wouldn't you want others to pull over?

"Three years has gone by since this all took place, and my journey through grief has been long and a continual process. I will never have my son back, but perhaps we may have helped save someone else's son through our advocacy.”

As Paquet added in his own speech, he'll never know if the new EMS location would have made a difference for his son, but he's certain it will make a difference for others living up the hill from the downtown area.

"The EMS team is a wonderful group of people; they literally work extremely hard to provide the service they do, and it's not an easy task, and I would like to thank them for the dedication and the hard work,” Paquet said.

"I cannot change the past and bring my son back, but I feel some relief knowing that other families in need will benefit from this state-of-the-art station.”

The new station will serve as the primary ambulance station in Whitehorse, serving much of the city, with space for six emergency vehicles as well as training and conference space and room to accommodate emergency dispatch services.

The station at the hospital will continue to serve Riverdale and downtown as well as other parts of the city as needed.

"Yukon's Emergency Medical Services provides rapid, highly skilled pre-hospital care and transport to those who are sick or injured,” Cathers said

"This new, centrally located ambulance station will help our paramedics provide rapid response to residents of Whitehorse and the surrounding area.”

Construction of the building began in 2011 and meets Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) standards.

EMS has a total of 72 staff and more than 155 volunteers throughout the territory.