Tranquille is a neighbourhood of the City of Kamloops, British Columbia, Canada, located on the northeast side of Kamloops Lake. It is the site of the Tranquille Sanatorium, a home for the mentally handicapped, a tuberculosis sanatorium, and originally the Kamloops Home for Men.[1] It was abandoned in 1985 when government cuts the funding that dispersed the mentally ill residents to group homes and other institutions.
Coverage[]
Tranquille is featured in The Last Supper, where 25 years after people have weather and erosion to gnawed away much of the land and infrastructure mankind once depended for food making it a future that already happened. Tim McLeod, along with Troy Bylsma and Andrew Watson, tour the place and explains the abandonment of the entire farm.
Introduction[]
The silo is being broken off.
Tranquille is surrounded by rolling hills where nature quickly reclaimed its former kingdom. The structures are hollow reminders of the food made to feed thousands with the ferocious winds and winter almost blown off the metal top of the silo, rusted feeding stalls and dried hay all remains in the dairy barn where 350 dairy cows once supplied milk, and at the slaughterhouse where only the faint smell of smoke emanates from where pigs were butchered and cured. Around the site are the neglected farmland that has been replaced with sagebrush and weeds and Tranquille is a ghostly reminder of a community where a town being forced to reinvent itself time and time again until all hope was lost in one day.
History[]
Tranquille before being abandoned.
It's history began in 1857 when the discovery of gold in the Tranquille River sparked the British Columbia Gold Rush and two families erected a town to supply the miners. But because of its isolation, the town's people were forced to produce all of their own meat and produce and by the turn of the 0th century, the gold rush ended and Tranquille underwent a transformation. When a contagious bacterial infection of the lungs called tuberculosis reached epidemic levels in Canada, Tranquille was converted into a TB sanitorium in 1907 because of it's dry mountain air and endless days of sunlight along with a believe that exposure to sunlight that helped patients suffering from the disease. In 1929, the Greens Hospital opened its doors but the residents in the nearby town of Kamloops objected to the sanitorium being located close to their community. Troy Bylsma stated that a lot of the first buidings were built and because of a fear of contacting tuberculosis, there was even a rule to not spit on the streets because one might contact tuberculosis through anything like it.
When a cure for Tuberculosis was announced in 1958, Tranquille changed once again and the sanitorium became home for 600 mentally disabled. However the site was closed in 1985, a victim of government program cuts which dispersed the mentally ill residents into group homes and other institutions.
Exploration[]
The abandoned Greens Hospital.
Only 90 buildings barely remain standing in the early 21st century. At the Greens Hospital, a sterilizer chamber for surgical tools still remains in the wall of an operating room but only the thing needing surgery is the timber frame structure itself. Tim McLeod stated that when something is abandoned and it have flat roofs and water, water will find its way with no maintenance. The trees encroach around the buildings and one have taken root on the roof. Melted snow and ice has collected on the flat gravel and tar roof and flooded the drain system for 25 years. Andrew Watson is on the top floor of the Greens Hospital and explains that water comes down through the ceiling, collapsing portions of the ceiling tile and pounded on the floor. He then shows the pounded water on the floor deteriorating the tiles which soaked the timber flooring, rotting it, and moved on to rot the floor strayers where it begins to collapse and a hole opens up allowing water to go onto the next floor and the process repeats by one floor at a time until it reaches the bottom.
Mold and fungi at the floors of the main building.
The main building, constructed in 1910, has nature to tightened its death grip around it. Tim McLeod shows a tree that wrapped itself around the steel tread on the stair and eventually puncture holes right in the side of the building. He then shows all kinds of vegetation outside the building moving in on the building and the root systems get into the concrete and push it apart which brings in water. Nature is working overtime inside where water has eaten through the dry wall ceiling which produces mold & fungi and in turn release micro toxins and poisonous chemicals that wreak havoc on wood. If inhaled by humans over a period of months or years, the mold can grow inside the lungs and cause death. Tim McLeod shows that ground is eaten by mold and moss while the room will be eaten away into nothing and will be in a position where the building starts to collapse.
Conclusion[]
The episode concluded the exploration with the statement that developers plan to restore Tranquille back into a self-sustaining agrarian community but until then, it will remain as a town on the verge of complete ruin.
Gallery[]
