Once a piggery, only rubble remains on historic Tranquille site in Kamloops

A pile of rubble on the old Tranquille sanatorium site by the Tranquille Creek bridge looks just like that, a pile of aging concrete poking out of the long grass. The site that sits several kilometres west of the city centre in a natural landscape of hills and creeks, is a constant source of fascination, for locals and visitors alike, due to its remarkable history, first as a sanatorium and then as a psychiatric institution. Every aging building and bit of stone has a story behind it including the rubble pile that so many have driven past on their way to Tranquille Creek or further up the dirt road to the community of Red Lake. Local historian Andy Philpot confirmed the concrete remains are those of a piggery that operated when the site was a tuberculosis sanatorium and then later a psychiatric institution. “They ran a farm there and when you look at Tranquille the whole area behind the creek was all farm field and a lot of residents living at Tranquille worked at the farm,” he said. “The piggery raised pork stock for most provincial facilities in the province, they used to maintain a breeding stock.” Philpot said the piggery came to an end in the late 1970s or early 1980s and later burned down sometime in the 1990s. What's left are the remnants of stalls spray painted with graffiti and pieces of feeding troughs. “The pork typically wasn’t for public sale it was for other institutions throughout BC, but every once in a while they’d have a local sale,” he said. “I’ve eaten pork raised out at Tranquille.” According to excerpt written by notable historical author Wayne Norton https://bcfoodhistory.ca/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/BC-History-Magazine-Annotated-Bibliography.pdf in British Columbia History Magazine in 2013, the piggery was part of a ranch called Alexandra Ranch, run to feed Tranquille patients and staff. “In 1907 when the sanatorium was opened, the medical profession subscribed to the belief that a diet of milk and eggs was essential for recovering from TB,” Norton wrote. “The Alexandra Ranch which formed the basis of the sanatorium had beef cattle, horses, chickens, sheep, pigs and fruit trees. "A boarding house, barn and slaughterhouse were added and a dairy herd was started.” READ MORE: 'Connection is everything': Kamloops Hospice is the heartbeat of community https://infotel.ca/inhome/connection-is-everything-kamloops-hospice-is-the-heartbeat-of-community/it107395 Alfalfa was grown on the site and water to irrigate the fields at first came from a dam behind the facility and later from the headwaters of Tranquille Lake many kilometres away. In time, there were outside sales of the meat and a dairy herd was created, and by the mid-1900s a cannery was in operation. The piggery is only a tiny piece of the long, fascinating history of the Tranquille site. Before Europeans came to the area, First Nations people frequented the land for fishing and hunting. After colonization, tuberculosis ravaged Canadian communities and was the leading cause of death in 1867. READ MORE: The deep, dark and mysterious history of Tranquille Sanatorium and psychiatric institution https://infotel.ca/newsitem/the-deep-dark-and-mysterious-history-of-tranquille-sanatorium-and-psychiatric-hospital/it64157 In the 1890s, two ranches belonging to the Fortune and Cooney family began taking in people infected with TB, and in 1904 the province began fundraising to build an isolated tuberculosis hospital. In the years that followed the Fortune and Cooney lands were purchased for the project, and in 1907 a tuberculosis hospital opened called the King Edward Memorial Sanatorium.  The sanatorium transitioned to a psychiatric institution in the 1960s and shut down in the early 1980s. To contact a reporter for this story, email Shannon Ainslie mailto:sainslie@infonews.ca  or call 250-819-6089 or email the editor mailto:news@infonews.ca . You can also submit photos, videos or news tips to the newsroom mailto:tips@infonews.ca  and be entered to win a monthly prize draw. We welcome your comments and opinions on our stories but play nice. We won't censor or delete comments unless they contain off-topic statements or links, unnecessary vulgarity, false facts, spam or obviously fake profiles. If you have any concerns about what you see in comments, email the editor in the link above. SUBSCRIBE to our awesome newsletter here https://infotel.ca/newsletter .