When I walked up the stairs to the derelict main building at the former Tranquille sanitarium and mental hospital I didn’t expect to feel calm.
The sun shone in the wide blue sky of that desert on a cool October day as we arrived at the gates and waited for our tour guide, the late Ed Nielsen, who was one of the owners of the 190-hectare property located about 10 minutes outside Kamloops, B.C. My classmate in my journalism undergrad at University College of the Cariboo (now Thompson Rivers University) scored an interview with Nielsen for a magazine we were publishing, and he asked me and another student to join him to take as many photos as we could.
I should mention this is pre-digital. About 17 years ago now. A selection of photos is included at the bottom of this entry.
The sanitarium carried with it all the legendary stories of an abandoned mental hospital. Shadows in windows, movement just out of sight, and whispers in the night, in the dark, of the network of tunnels that connected dozens of buildings across the property.
For thousands of years, aboriginal groups lived, hunted and fished in the area until homesteaders Charles Thomas Cooney and his wife, Elizabeth, built their farm on the banks of Kamloops Lake in about 1865. At the turn of the century, the homestead was sold to the Anti-Tuberculosis Society to build the King Edward VII sanitarium, as the desert climate was the key treatment for the disease at the time. In the late 1920s, the B.C. government took over ownership and operation of the facility, which housed more than 1,000 patients and staff. In the 1950s, effective treatment and a cure for TB saw the place repurposed as Tranquille, a home for people with mental illness and disabilities.
Tranquille was not only a hospital, but also a working farm that included cows and goats for dairy and meat as well as a vegetable garden. The farm produced the majority of the food for patients and staff, prepared in state-of-the-art kitchens and served in a massive cafeteria. The compound also had its own electrical plant, a fire hall, theatre, school and laundry services, which accepted laundry from government facilities across the region.
We walked through the endless hallways, paint peeling from the walls and ceiling, as sunlight streamed through dusty, broken glass. Leaves, glass and tile ground under our shoes as we peeked into rooms with bed frames folded again the wall. Cold stainless steel shone in the surgical rooms as we tried to guess the use of the equipment left behind. Ledgers were left on desks and paperwork was strewn about, as if someone had stood up in a hurry to leave and simply never came back.
It was quiet. The white noise generated from a cluster of humans now silent. But if I let my imagination wander, I could see the nurses in their white aprons and caps walking quickly here and there, a hand on the shoulder of a patient and a whispered conversation. Doctors with clipboards and stethoscopes wearing shiny black patent leather shoes that clicked on the mosaic tile floor.
In 1980, B.C. began phasing out institutions in favour of a more inclusive society. The transition saw staff teaching residents about the new world they were about to enter, like traffic signs and how to shop for food. In 1985, the last resident was discharged and the facility closed.
Enter the developers. In 1991, Giovanni Camporese, owner of a cheese company in Vancouver, bought the property & changed its name to Padova City. Camporese rented out some of the former doctors’ residences and other buildings as financial troubles plagued the project. The property went into receivership and later sold to Nielsen and partners.
Nielsen’s plan was to restore as much of the site as possible, turning it into a tourist destination with hotel accommodation. Unfortunately, shortly after we met him, Nielsen died suddenly, throwing the future of Tranquille into question. Since then, Nielsen’s former partners have attracted some investment to clean up the site from hazardous materials (back then everything was made from asbestos) and restore the heritage barns to their former glory. Tranquille Farm Fresh offers ways to explore the working farm and its history through theatre productions and tours.
It’s been nearly two decades since I last set eyes on Tranquille. It sounds like I might be able to once again as I pencil it in for next year’s Interior road trip.
Further reading: B.C. author Michael Kluckner talked to former residents and staff at Tranquille for his book Vanishing British Columbia. His website features a selection of their accounts https://bit.ly/2QAsPp1
