Field of Dreams

Image by: Gregory Crow

When you visit a ghost town, you don’t expect a lineup. But when I pull up to the gate of the former King Edward VII tuberculosis sanatorium in Tranquille, 20 minutes outside of downtown Kamloops, I am the third car in queue. It seems I’m not the only one curious about the property everybody simply calls Tranquille.


“It’s a pretty regular occurrence here,” says Annette McLeod, who has joined her husband Tim to give me a tour of the site. “Grown men in ninja suits come out at night with baseball bats to look for ghosts.”


Tim McLeod is the development manager for B.C. Wilderness Tours Inc., the B.C.-Alberta development consortium that owns the 190-hectare property. The former TB infirmary and mental health institution – a series of once grand-looking buildings now blighted with broken windows and overgrown weeds – was established in 1907 but has sat virtually untouched for almost a quarter century. McLeod and a group of 13 investors are hoping to breathe life back into the storied property bordering Kamloops Lake with an ambitious plan that includes a 120-hectare farm, a five-star eco-resort, a marina and a 1,300-unit real estate development. 


So far, the investors have spent just over $3 million on environmental surveys and demolition. They plan to spend a further $30 million to get the site to the point where they can sell portions of the property to developers, who will in turn sell single-family lots for between $200,000 and $400,000, ultimately creating a community of some 3,000 people. The group also hopes to turn the barns and hayfields, which once fed patients at the sanatorium as well as Kamloops residents, back into a working farm. 


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  • Lindsey Norris, 
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