Site of Mekong Grocery tragedy to be redeveloped — nearly 20 years after the Ottawa fire killed five

Five members of the Thach family were killed on April 5, 2005 when an early-morning fire tore through the second-floor of the building at 816 Somerset Street. The family lived above their small store, the Mekong Grocery.

The death toll was among the worst in the city’s history from a lone house fire.

The burned-out shell of the building remained part of the Chinatown streetscape for four years before being demolished in April 2009. The lot has gathered weeds ever since.

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But a sign went up earlier this year that suggests a new, four-storey building will soon go up on the site. The sign, from the local design firm Oakwood, indicates construction is to begin in the spring, but there are no signs yet of work on the site.

Oakwood did not return a request for comment Sunday.

A person walks past the former residence of 816 Somerset St. W. in Ottawa, on Saturday, June 22, 2024. Photo by Spencer Colby /Postmedia

When the Mekong Grocery was opened in 1985 by Cambodian refugees Sophal Hardy and Khorany Ou, it was one of the first stores in Ottawa to offer spices and dried fish from Southeast Asia. It quickly became a hub for the city’s Cambodian community.

The store was sold to another Cambodian family in 1995, and then in 2001, Cambodian refugee Makara Thach and his wife, Coli Yan, bought the store and moved into the apartment above it with their four children.

Thach and his wife had fled Cambodia in the late 1980s with their daughter, Linny. They spent a year in a refugee camp on the Thai border before immigrating to Canada, and had three more children in quick succession after settling in this country.

The early morning fire that struck the building at 816 Somerset Street claimed the lives of Thach’s wife, Coli Yan, and their children Linny, 23, Gary, 14, Danny, 13, and Sunny, 12.

Makara Thach, who slept at the rear of the building in his grandson’s room, woke to the sounds of the infant’s cries. He rescued his year-old grandson, Sipheng, and escaped the burning building along with his son-in-law, Bunny Svay.