“5 “Thrown Out into the Community”” in “Small Cities, Big Issues”
5 “Thrown Out into the Community”
The Closure of Tranquille
Between 1958 and 1985, Tranquille Institution, located not far west of Kamloops, British Columbia, opened its doors to hundreds of developmentally and intellectually disabled individuals. Some stayed just a few years and received training that enabled them to live in the community, while others left only when the institution closed in 1985 as part of the provincial government’s plan to deinstitutionalize those with mental and physical disabilities. In the years following its closure, Tranquille existed as a ghost town, unoccupied and physically closed to the outside world, although very much alive in the collective memory and imagination of many Kamloopsians. This chapter explores the reaction of the citizens of Kamloops to the closure of Tranquille and to the impending deinstitutionalization of its residents.
The closure of Tranquille had a considerable economic, political, and social impact on the city of Kamloops. As the third-largest employer in the area, the institution was an economic generator and had a stabilizing effect on local businesses, schools, and health services. The closure of Tranquille and the relocation of the institution’s residents to various communities in the province meant significant job losses that had repercussions throughout the city—this at a time of nationwide recession, when the unemployment rate in British Columbia reached a staggering 15 percent (Statistics Canada, Labour Force Survey 2018). Despite a professed acceptance of the social philosophy underlying deinstitutionalization, Kamloopsians protested against the decision to close Tranquille, and many also fought the creation of neighbourhood group homes to house former residents. Although the closure went ahead as planned and many of the former residents were relocated to the city, the experience of deinstitutionalization as it unfolded in Kamloops is a potent reminder of the vital link between institutions and the communities that surround them.
A Brief History of Tranquille
In late-nineteenth-century British Columbia, people with intellectual and developmental disabilities were housed in the Public Hospital for the Insane, located in New Westminster, which opened its doors in 1878 as the Provincial Lunatic Asylum (Scott 2011, 93). It was not long before overcrowding led to the construction of other such facilities, notably the Hospital for the Mind, also known as Essondale Hospital (and eventually as Riverview Hospital), which opened in 1913 at Coquitlam. In those early days, little practical distinction was made between people with developmental disabilities and those with mental illness, although gradually this situation changed. Starting in the 1920s, the Public Hospital for the Insane began to specialize in the custodial care of the “feeble-minded” (with other patients transferred to the Essondale Hospital) and, in 1950, was renamed the Woodlands School, with its focus shifting to the institutional education of children with intellectual disabilities.1 In 1958, overcrowding at Woodlands led to the use of Tranquille as a similar centre in the interior of British Columbia, and, in 1976, a third facility opened at Glendale Lodge, near Victoria. Tranquille was thus the only “hinterland” institution of its kind in the province.
Tranquille was not among the province’s early mental institutions; rather, it began life as a tuberculosis sanatorium. In 1906, the British Columbia Anti-Tuberculosis Society, which was looking for land in the province’s dry belt on which to establish a sanatorium, approached the Fortune family, owners of an extensive ranch at the mouth of the Tranquille River. In view of public concerns about the highly infectious nature of the disease, the Kamloops Board of Trade was willing to support the construction of a sanatorium “near but not in” the city (Norton 1999, 41; see also Harris 2010, 5). After some negotiation, the sale of land was inked, and the King Edward Sanatorium opened its doors in 1907, providing respite for thousands of afflicted men, women, and children. In 1921, the institution changed from private to public hands when the provincial government purchased the site and, the following year, acquired the neighbouring Cooney ranch, bringing Tranquille’s size to 191 hectares.2 Because of the economic viability and financial benefits of raising food at the site, a farm was established at Tranquille Institution, which produced fruits and vegetables, dairy products, meat, and honey for the residents. Surplus food production allowed for sales and trade with other local producers.
By the mid-1950s, however, the tuberculosis crisis had waned, owing in large measure to the development of antibiotics, and, in 1958, the sanatorium closed. Tranquille subsequently became a something of a political football, with the provincial government hesitating about the site’s future and the merchants and citizens of Kamloops pushing for the institution’s revitalization. After much lively debate, local Social Credit MLA and Minister of Highways Phil Gaglardi announced that Tranquille would reopen, under the Department of Mental Health, to relieve the overcrowded facility of Woodlands (Norton 1999, 173–74).
By 1958, the site consisted of just over forty buildings, four of them designated as hospitals. Among the remaining buildings were cottages for doctors’ housing, a fire hall, a kitchen, laundry, farm buildings and a dairy barn, nurses’ buildings, and resident dormitories. The institution had also been modernized with a power plant and central air-conditioning. The buildings were linked by underground tunnels, used for transferring food and laundry. Above ground were magnificent, lush gardens said to rival the famous Butchart Gardens in the province’s capital, as well as orchards and extensive vegetable and berry gardens.3 In 1958, in reference to the self-sufficiency of the compound, a Vancouver Sun reporter dubbed Tranquille “a whole little city in itself” (Norton 1999, 173). Although this is an oft-cited and fondly used descriptor, Tranquille was not an actual city—officials did not wield civic power and the residents were not granted rights of citizenship, such as the right to vote.
At its peak, Tranquille housed about seven hundred residents, or roughly a quarter of the provincial institutionalized population of those with developmental and intellectual disabilities. The age of residents ranged widely, from young children to senior citizens. Tranquille’s initial mandate was twofold: to serve those living in the interior and northern reaches of the province and to limit its clientele to those then called the “educable retarded” (Norton 1999, 178), that is, those whose disabilities were relatively less severe. As John Lord and Cheryl Hearn (1987, 20) note, however, during the 1970s, “the model of care in institutions began to shift from one of primarily custodial care to one of preparing, training, and habilitating those people with ‘potential’ for community living.” As a result, between 1971 and 1983, more than four hundred residents of Tranquille were deinstitutionalized (20), some of whom moved to group homes in nearby Kamloops. This exodus was offset by an influx of new residents, many of them transferred to Tranquille from Woodlands or other provincial institutions—people whose disabilities were more severe and who were deemed to need permanent custodial care. In 1983, the director of resident care at Tranquille, Alex McIntosh, estimated that 80 percent of the residents were “profoundly retarded” (quoted in Kettner 1983). As Lord and Hearn (1987, 20) point out, this shift in the composition of the resident population meant that staff were accustomed to caring for people who, in their estimation, could not safely transition into life in the community but instead required “segregated, protective, custodial environments.”
Tranquille as a Total Institution
A total institution is one that creates a physically isolated, self-contained, and all-encompassing world. The concept of a total institution was developed by sociologist Erving Goffman, notably in the essays collected in Asylums (1961), to describe a range of institutions founded on “the bureaucratic organization of whole blocks of people” (6) who are required to sleep, work, and play within the confines of the institution and thereby physically isolated from the larger society. Prisons and mental hospitals are Goffman’s key examples, but he suggests others, including orphanages, concentration camps, boarding schools, army barracks, and monasteries. As Goffman notes, total institutions differ to some degree in their overarching purpose. In contrast to prisons, which exist “to protect the community against what are felt to be intentional dangers to it” (4–5), mental hospitals, along with TB sanatoriums and leprosaria, are “places established to care for persons felt to be both incapable of looking after themselves and a threat to the community, albeit an unintended one” (4). In a total institution, the autonomy of residents is subverted: they have little, if any, control over their daily activities and are instead subject to the authority of those who operate the institution. In the case of groups of people who are already assumed to be incompetent and/or dangerous, institutionalization serves to reinforce their marginalization.
Tranquille certainly qualified as a total institution, one at which the process of marginalization operated in two directions. Not only were patients rendered peripheral to society at large but, as Lord and Hearn (1987, 23) observe, “the longer a family member lived in the institution, the more of an outsider the family became.” With considerable anguish and sorrow, families entrusted the lives of their children to Tranquille, partly for lack of alternatives and partly on the basis of medical opinion to the effect that institutional care was the best, and quite possibly the only, option for their child (9–11). However, as time passed, parents came to feel like intruders at Tranquille. They were “eased out of a parental role” (25) and placed in the position of visitors, watching someone else care for their child—a child who, over time, became increasingly unfamiliar to them. Tranquille, like other institutions of the day, did not routinely inform parents about their child’s progress or setbacks, as if parents were no longer in charge of—or even necessarily concerned about—the welfare of their child. In addition, the use of heavy medication for behaviour control often meant that parents were unable to communicate with their child, thereby increasing their sense of alienation (23–24). In this way, just as the residents at Tranquille were marginalized, so were their families.
An institution is defined not solely by its residents and their families but also by those who work there. In the all-encompassing setting of a total institution, workers come to identify with their place of employment—its people, policies, and physical and organizational structures—making it difficult for them to envision a life for themselves outside of the institution. This phenomenon of envelopment is illustrated by a Tranquille staff member’s comments: “The way we always looked at it, there were a thousand people at Tranquille. Four hundred lived there and six hundred worked there. . . . But all our lives are based, substantially, on the institution” (quoted in Lord and Hearn 1987, 18). Many of the staff at Tranquille were firmly entrenched, having founded their careers on the institution; the unionization of most of the staff, in 1977, enhanced job security, but it also increased the workers’ sense of personal investment in the institution (19).
As a physical and psychological environment, Tranquille fit the description of a total institution: it was, in many ways, its own world. Yet this does not mean that no significant interaction occurred between the residents of Tranquille and the city of Kamloops. A series of eight interviews conducted in 2009 with former employees of Tranquille provide insight into these interactions.4 Tranquille residents frequently travelled to the city for social events and shopping; eighty-six of them regularly worked at Pleasant Industries, a worksite for the mentally ill; and younger residents attended nearby Fitzwater School, a public school for those with disabilities (interview, Barb). During the baseball season, Kamloops leagues would schedule games at the baseball field at Tranquille twice a week, and Tranquille residents would come out to see the games and cheer on the players. Former employees also talked about going to Tranquille on their days off to visit with residents and other workers, taking residents on picnics or camping, and inviting them over to their own houses for holiday dinners (interview, Charlotte; “Upset Families Battle Move” 1984). Regular Sunday outings for Kamloopsians included a visit to the sunken gardens at Tranquille, and the institution annually held open houses, when visitors could tour the facilities and grounds. Barbecues, corn roasts, and other events that drew on the bounty of Tranquille’s farm and ranch were also held on site every year; in the early 1970s, upwards of seven hundred guests attended the annual barbecue (interview, Charlie).
In addition to such social events, many Kamloopsians volunteered their time with the residents. Some of the workers at Tranquille lived on site and raised their children there (interview, Charlie; McRae 1983), while some parents lived in Kamloops solely because their child was housed at Tranquille and they want to be able to visit regularly (“Ombudsman Studies Tranquille” 1984). This flow of individuals between Tranquille and Kamloops suggests an intimate link between the two communities, one that extended beyond Kamloops’s reliance on Tranquille as an economic driver. Clearly, the institution occupied a central place in the lives of those who worked there. But, because so many Kamloopsians were connected in some way to Tranquille, whether directly or indirectly, the institution was also an inextricable part of the identity of Kamloops.
The Decision to Close Tranquille
Beginning in the 1960s, Canadians’ attitudes towards institution-based psychiatric care began to shift, as did government policy (Sealy and Whitehead 2004, 250). Between 1965 and 1980, nearly fifty thousand beds were closed in Canadian residential psychiatric facilities.5 Beginning in the 1960s, a similar shift away from institution-based care took place in most Western countries. According to Marijke Gijswijt-Hofstra and Harry Oosterhuis (2005, 14–15), there were numerous reasons for this trend, some practical and others ideological and ethical: “the introduction of psychotropic drugs from the 1950s; nationally designed plans to integrate psychiatry into the overall health and social care-providing system of the welfare state; the anti-psychiatric criticism of institutional and medical psychiatry; the striving for humanistic reform of the care and treatment of psychiatric patients and enhancement of their social integration and civil rights; and last but not least, financial and political considerations.” The closure of Tranquille was motivated by the “last but not least”: the economic and political climate, both provincial and national.
In 1981, the BC government, under the leadership of Premier William Bennett, leader of the Social Credit Party, expressed its commitment to expanding community supports and services with a view to the deinstitutionalization of people with developmental disabilities (Lord and Hearn 1987, 27). Two years later, however, in a neoconservative response to the growing recession, Bennett’s government launched a severe restructuring of social services, education, and the public sector. Bennett’s 1983 budget and the twenty-six bills that accompanied it eliminated whole categories of social services, abolished the Human Rights Commission and rent controls, drastically increased class size in public schools, and essentially stripped public sector employees of their power to engage in collective bargaining. In particular, Bill 3, the Public Sector Restraint Act, gave government employers the right to fire public workers without cause and severely curtailed seniority rights, while at the same time the government vowed to reduce the number of provincial employees by 25 percent (Poole 1987, 80–81). Negative reaction to the so-called restraint budget of 1983 swelled, culminating in the Operation Solidarity series of rotating strikes in British Columbia in the late fall of 1983.
The 1983 budget also contained plans for the almost immediate closure of Tranquille, slated for December 1984. In a press release issued on 8 July 1983, the Ministry of Human Resources announced its decision “to accelerate the thrust towards deinstitutionalization for the mentally retarded” (quoted in Lord and Hearn 1987, 27), thereby attempting to frame the closure within the context of its earlier commitment to community living. Grace McCarthy, the minister of Human Resources and the public face of deinstitutionalization in the province, subsequently argued that the closure was also a matter of fiscal responsibility, pointing to the high cost of continuing to operate Tranquille. Speaking before the Legislative Assembly on 8 March 1984, McCarthy stated: “We won’t apologize for the time-frame. I will tell you why the time-frame: Tranquille needed a lot of financial investment to improve it. Some has already been done, but the physical plant needs millions of dollars invested in it.” As she went on to declare, “We will look back on this year—a year of restraint—as the most aggressive year of deinstitutionalization that probably this province has ever seen or will see, and we should be proud of the fact that we can do it in this time” (British Columbia, Legislative Assembly 1984, 3719).
But pride was not the response articulated by the citizens of Kamloops. The recession of the early 1980s hit resource-based towns hard, but Kamloops was a national economic black spot: unemployment in the region was close to 20 percent, and Tranquille was the third-largest employer in the city, with close to six hundred people working at the institution (Lord and Hearn 1987, 58, 2). The response of Kamloopsians to the announced closure was one of protest—by the parents and advocates of the residents, by the Tranquille workers, and by the people of Kamloops in general.
Protests by Parents and Advocates
The responses of parents of the residents varied. Most first heard of the closure on the evening news broadcast of 7 July 1983. The first direct contact between the government and families occurred six to eight weeks after the public announcement via a form letter from the government planners to the parents of Tranquille residents. During this two-month lag, rumours abounded, and the lack of official information heightened parents’ anxiety. In late July, an article in the Sentinel titled “Nobody Has Told Parents Anything” identified one the parents’ chief concerns: “They’re on edge about how receptive the community will be to having mentally handicapped living among them. ‘The attitude of the community is still in the 1800s,’ claimed a Kamloops mother. ‘We don’t want to throw them out into the wilds where anyone can take advantage of them’” (Crump 1983). Indeed, concern for the safety of their children was a reason often heard from parents who objected to the prospect of deinstitutionalization. Parents spoke enthusiastically of the freedom of residents to wander the gardens of Tranquille, juxtaposing this vision of autonomy and safety to the busy traffic of city streets and possible encounters with predatory strangers. The lack of both consultation and reliable information served to reinforce parents’ long-standing sense of themselves as outsiders (Lord and Hearn 1987, 44). Years, sometimes decades, of being pushed to the periphery had done nothing to prepare them for anything like engaged decision making about their children’s future.
There is no doubt that deinstitutionalization represented a significant change for families. A small number of parents wrote to their Member of Parliament, pointing out that they had moved to Kamloops to be near their child and were distressed that their child might be moved to a group home in another city (Johnson 1984b). Other parents painfully recounted how emotionally difficult it had been for them to place their child at Tranquille, noting that they had done so under medical advice that this would be best for their son or daughter (Lord and Hearn 1987, 11–12). Now they were being told that institutional care was not the best option, forcing them to revisit their original decision, which brought with it no small sense of guilt. Some were afraid to take their child back home. Parents who had grown apart from their child or had simply grown old worried that they were no longer in a position to care for their adult child (“Upset Families Battle Move” 1984). Others supported the concept of deinstitutionalization but worried about how it would be implemented (“Ombudsman Studies Tranquille” 1984). Unlike other groups that resisted the closure, however, parents as a group did not organize against it; they remained isolated and relatively passive. This reaction attests to their degree of alienation and disempowerment.
In contrast to parents, advocacy groups—notably British Columbians for Mentally Handicapped People (BCMHP, now the BC Association for Community Living)—were initially supportive of the closure and had, in fact, been advocating deinstitutionalization for several years, on humanitarian grounds. Addressing the Legislative Assembly on 11 July, Minister McCarthy had, moreover, promised a joint planning approach to the closure of Tranquille:
We will take into consideration the staff of Tranquille when this change is made. We will take into consideration the families of the clients of Tranquille, the community, and the union representing the staff. They will all be involved in the closing of this institution that has served British Columbia so well, with great love and care, over very many years. (British Columbia, Legislative Assembly 1983a, 210)
The BCMHP was thus anticipating a joint planning process, one in which it would be directly involved. But, as the group soon discovered, the government had no intention of engaging in a cooperative approach to planning (see Lord and Hearn 1987, 46–47). It was not long, then, before its initial optimism gave way to concern.
In response to being closed out by the government, the BCMHP shifted its focus to developing a strategy to support families by linking local societies with parents who had sons or daughters at Tranquille. For example, the Kamloops chapter of the BCMHP, the Kamloops Society for the Mentally Handicapped (now the Kamloops Association for Community Living), hosted information days for the parents and the public, letting parents know their rights and educating the community about the benefits of deinstitutionalization (“Kamloops Group Studies Tranquille Closure” 1983).
Advocacy groups felt so strongly about the rights of the mentally challenged that they engaged in civil disobedience to protect them. In July 1984, the government announced plans to transfer a number of “medically fragile” residents from Tranquille to Victoria’s Glendale Lodge.6 The transfer, of a total of fifty-five residents, was scheduled for September. Citing the government’s promise that it would not shift residents from one institution to another, the BCMHP held blockades at Tranquille when the transfers were made, sponsored candlelight vigils, used the media to share poignant personal narratives about the individuals who were to be transferred, attempted to get the BC Supreme Court to block the transfers, and appealed to Karl Friedmann, BC’s ombudsman (who supported them). They argued that the transfer to Glendale “betrays the promise of deinstitutionalization” (“Ombudsman Studies Tranquille” 1984). Of particular concern were the parents who had settled in Kamloops to be close to their children in Tranquille. A transfer to Glendale would mean either relocation and a career or job change for the parents or else costly travel expenses that many parents could ill afford, particularly in light of the depressed economy. But all of this protest was to no avail; the transfers went ahead. Articulating his dismay at the situation, Al Etmanski, the executive director of the BCMHP, opined that the Ministry of Human Resources had “chickened out” and could not bring itself to achieve full deinstitutionalization: “It was sort of like building a bridge that missed the other side by five feet” (quoted in Knox 1985).
Protests by Workers
For the most part, Tranquille employees responded to the announcement of the closure in two ways: they expressed apprehension about their own job security, and they voiced a lack of confidence in the ability of residents to adapt to life outside of Tranquille. Their current contract was set to expire in October 1983, and, in view of Bill 3, their most immediate concern was that they would be fired, lose their seniority, and be unable to secure another government position. Tranquille employees were represented the British Columbia Government Employees Union (BCGEU) and by the Union of Psychiatric Nurses of BC. When, shortly after the closure was announced, union representatives learned that the government had made no plans for Tranquille’s staff (Lord and Hearn 1987, 56), the workers decided to occupy the site. Beginning on 20 July, workers took over the administration buildings, successfully preventing management from accessing the site, and, in the days to come, would take over the employee cafeteria, the fire hall, and other sites until virtually the whole complex was under their control. The occupation lasted for three weeks, with the workers refusing to leave until they were assured job security.
In interviews and newspaper articles, the workers also expressed concern about the fate of the residents, worrying that some residents would not be able to make the transition to a group home in such a short time. “They are not ready or equipped to be ‘thrown’ out into the community,” one remarked; “furthermore, the community is not ready to handle this grade of mental retardation” (quoted in Grant 1983). Some questioned whether community living was truly the better option. “For many of our residents,” said one worker, “Tranquille is the only home they have ever had. They enjoy the security and attention they get from this facility. The residents here have not been given a choice as to whether they want to go or not” (quoted in Paine 1983). Granted, these expressions of concern may well have been rooted in a more fundamental fear of job loss. Yet, at least to some extent, they may also have reflected the workers’ conviction that the care they provided at Tranquille was important—that the residents, most of whose disabilities were quite severe, needed their attention and protection.
On 10 August 1983, after twenty-one days of occupation, the protest was called off, but the workers, who remained without a firm assurance of job security, vowed to continue their fight. Later that same day, Tranquille workers participated in an Operation Solidarity rally in Kamloops that attracted four thousand protestors.
Protests by Kamloopsians
The reaction of Kamloops citizens was expressed primarily in terms of fears about the social and economic impact of the closure. A poll released on 7 June 1984 showed that 75 percent of those surveyed disagreed with the decision to close Tranquille, with many citing a lack of adequate facilities in the community for the mentally handicapped (33%) and a concern that the closure would increase unemployment (28%) (Johnson 1984a). Many letters to the editor in the local newspapers likewise expressed concerns about the loss of jobs and the economic impact of the closure on the city. Although Minister McCarthy assured the Kamloops community that the vacated property would be turned to another use and that “something will be done in terms of providing some kind of industry there for the municipality” (British Columbia, Legislative Assembly 1983a, 210), the worries of city residents were not assuaged.
In August 1983, an article in the Sentinel quoted Dave McPherson of the BCGEU as noting that Tranquille contributed $13.37 million annually to the Kamloops economy in terms of provisions purchased for the institution and the wages spent by its nearly six hundred employees. He estimated the spin-off effects of the closure as costing the city $40 million annually. And he anticipated a devastating impact on the social fabric of the community as people left the city in search of jobs elsewhere (“Tranquille Closure Carries $40 Million Tag” 1983). A storefront campaign was launched during which retailers placed posters in their windows calling on the government to take a second look at the closure of Tranquille, and Tranquille workers affixed small “Tranquille wages” stickers on their dollars to provide merchants with an indication of the spending power of Tranquille employees (McRae 1984c). Mayor Mike Latta set up a task force a month after the announcement of the closure to grapple with its impact. Noting the exodus of employers from the city in recent years, he stated that “the city just doesn’t need another major out-migration and loss of jobs” (quoted in “Tranquille Workers Meet” 1983).
Some Kamloopsians expressed disquiet about the influx of former Tranquille residents into the community. The greatest immediate concern was that the city would be overrun with uncontrollable mentally handicapped people, “the ones who jump up and down and bounce off walls” (“Tranquille Closing Fuels Fear in City” 1984). Homeowners were upset about group homes being established in their neighbourhood, fearing inadequate supervision of residents, lack of safety for their own children, and declining property values (Hoff 1984b). This resistance formed along class lines, with the complaints predominantly coming from the residents of neighbourhoods higher on the socioeconomic scale (Hoff 1984a).
There is no doubt that the media inflamed a public outcry. Emotional and exaggerated responses were printed in the newspapers, variously derogating Tranquille residents as “total vegetables” or voicing fears that those released might “rape our women and children” (“Tranquille Debate Takes a Wrong Turn” 1984). The newspapers were also peppered with eyewitness accounts of observations of such things as handicapped men masturbating in public (Hanson 1984), children being attacked, and Tranquille residents “being totally destructive . . . ripping curtains off the walls” (Ferry 1984). Homeowners complained that advocacy groups were encouraging clergy to pressure them to accept group homes in their neighbourhoods. When the BCGEU launched an advertising campaign that equated deinstitutionalization with “dumping” people in the community (McRae 1984a, 1984b), others accused public workers of whipping up a campaign of hysteria and bigotry against the people they were paid to serve.
Group homes were funded by the provincial government and operated by a combination of private owners and nonprofit organizations such as the Kamloops Society for the Mentally Handicapped, with service providers chosen by the Ministry of Human Resources largely on the basis of bidding (see Lord and Hearn 1987, 99–101). The fight against group homes entered the judicial arena when a group of Kamloops citizens organized a legal challenge based on land-use contracts, claiming that community care facilities were not defined as a permitted use in some of the city’s residential areas. Kamloopsians also demanded open public meetings to discuss the location of the group homes and sent petitions to city council. Kamloops already had a high concentration of group homes resulting from the gradual deinstitutionalization in the pre-1983 period, and there was a feeling that a saturation point had been reached.
In the end, the government stopped holding neighbourhood information sessions about group homes and instead set such homes up quietly so as to avoid a community ruckus. This was entirely legal, since the majority of the group homes were small, between three to seven people, and did not require community consultation. In all, about eighty former residents were placed in community care in Kamloops; the other residents were purportedly placed as close to their home communities as possible (British Columbia, Legislative Assembly 1983b, 916; 1983c, 2913). Of the fifty-nine group homes across the province that were developed for the men and women previously housed at Tranquille, only six engendered a negative community response—but three of these six were in Kamloops (Lord and Hearn 1987, 102). In all likelihood, the economic reality of the closure within an already depressed area exacerbated community tensions.
Long-Term Impacts of Closure
In the end, fewer than twenty Tranquille employees kept government jobs in Kamloops (Knox 1985). Many employees—over a hundred—accepted transfers to either Woodlands or Glendale. Others took early retirement, found jobs in local group homes, or went into another branch of employment altogether. Many still get together regularly. Fifteen to thirty former employees meet for monthly lunches, with their numbers blossoming to eighty at Christmas (interview, Charlotte). There have been two reunions, the first in 1990, which was attended by over eight hundred people, and a second in 1998 (“Hundreds Expected for Reunion” 1990; Duurtsema 1998). Former employees express considerable bitterness about the way in which deinstitutionalization was handled, and they are angry that, in the long run, Tranquille has acquired a negative reputation, in that institutionalization has come to be regarded as bad. In interviews, these former employees maintained that the residents were safe and protected. “If people could see how we dealt with the residents and how happy it was, people would think differently,” said a psychiatric nurse, adding, “We were their family” (interview, Charlotte). Another former employee also invoked the metaphor of family to describe the relationship of professional staff with the residents: “We treated them well, they trusted us; we were like family to them.” She also took issue with the prevailing image of Tranquille: “I never considered Tranquille an institution,” she said (interview, Barb). These former employees valued their monthly reunions, which gave them an opportunity to reminisce and share pleasant memories of their days at Tranquille. “I just loved Tranquille,” said the psychiatric nurse, who had worked there from the late 1960s until its closure. “The last day at Tranquille was the saddest day of my life” (interview, Charlotte).
Another group of former employees, however, criticized these gatherings as too self-focused, arguing that the constant harking back to the “good old days” at Tranquille was more about the employees themselves, who seemed to give little thought to what was best for the residents. This group seemed to be more connected to the former residents, often socializing with them. One former worker, speaking for some of the staff, stated: “The last reunion, clients weren’t allowed to come. It was to be staff remembering staff. We all boycotted it. If we are not a group, then I don’t want to go” (interview, Trudy). Moreover, not all former workers had rosy memories of Tranquille. “We tried our best out there, but it was all wrong,” one said. “There were a lot of good people there, but it was an institution” (interview, Frank). Another commented, “People made the best of what they had out there. Staff had to survive Tranquille, just like the residents did” (interview, Joan). And, regarding the closure, one former employee recalled: “It was stressful to watch people feel like their lives were over. There were more jobs, but people didn’t see it as an opportunity to grow—they didn’t think of the residents’ lives improving. They saw it as the end of their lives” (interview, Trudy).
Whether the residents’ lives did improve is a matter of debate. Follow-up studies of the closure of Tranquille have raised doubts about the degree to which deinstitutionalization actually occurred. A study conducted by John Lord and Alison Pedlar (1991), who examined the life situation of eighteen former residents of Tranquille four years after its closure, demonstrated that “simply moving people into homes in the community does not necessarily ensure enhanced quality of life” (1). The study found that some homes were clearly still institutional in nature (15); that the majority of homes simply had no involvement with neighbours (20); that while some parents expressed great joy over the reunification of their families, less than half of the residents had some family involvement (25–26); and that “in” the community does not mean “of” the community (57). Another study compared the deinstitutionalized Tranquille residents to the institutionalized Woodlands and Glendale residents and found no significant difference in quality of life between the groups:
That the Tranquille matched group and the Woodlands/Glendale matched group did not differ on most variables may be considered a positive finding in itself as the Tranquille subjects did not deteriorate by the move to the community. In other words, they were as well off in the community as the other subjects were remaining in the institution. On the other hand, the philosophy of proponents of deinstitutionalization has been premised on a belief that individuals in institutions are actively at risk of greater deterioration than are comparable individuals in the community. This was not substantiated in this study. (Wilcox 1988, 202–3)
As yet another researcher concluded: “Invisible walls continue to isolate people in their communities” (Le Cavalier 2005, 13)
To scholars of deinstitutionalization, this is a familiar theme. Across Canada and the United States, initial enthusiasm for deinstitutionalization waned with the growing awareness that many discharged residents were leading impoverished lives in the community, struggling with addictions, and swelling the ranks of the homeless. The new visibility of those with mental health challenges, previously hidden away in remote institutions, fuelled the perception that deinstitutionalization had failed. It also appeared that the quality of life for many of those in community care was either not appreciably different from the days of the institution or had in fact deteriorated. Many argued that the institution had not disappeared but had simply changed location—a process referred to as “trans-institutionalization” (Morrow, Dagg, and Pederson 2008, 2; see also Niles 2013, 69–78). Individuals were now housed in smaller facilities, but these were still institutional in nature. Scholars have thus argued that the tensions and challenges of long-term institutional care have been reproduced rather than resolved with deinstitutionalization (see, for example, Davies et al. 2016).
Some lessons learned from the closure of Tranquille were applied to the subsequent closure of Woodlands and Glendale, in 1996. When Tranquille closed, individuals were placed in group homes in accordance with the principle that those with similar abilities should be placed together; compatibility and existing friendships were not considered. As a result, not only did many residents lose friends through deinstitutionalization, but they also found themselves “locked-in” to a home shared with others with whom they did not get along (Lord and Pedlar 1991, 45). And these incompatible groupings created less-than-happy staff. When Glendale and Woodlands were closed, the placement of residents in group homes was centred much more on compatibility and friendships than on similar needs. The planning and process of the deinstitutionalization of Woodlands and Glendale also took place over a longer period, allowing for more preparation and care to be put into consultations with residents, family members, employees, and community. Moreover, both New Westminster and Victoria had complex and dynamic economies that could more easily weather the economic fallout of deinstitutionalization, on top of which, by the time these two facilities were closed down, the provincial economy was more robust. All of this meant that the closures of these institutions went more smoothly and enjoyed greater community support.
Conclusion
When the closure of Tranquille occurred within such an unexpectedly tight time frame, the city of Kamloops reacted. The response took the form of resistance, although this resistance assumed different forms. Predictably, some Kamloopsians focused on their own self-interests, opposing the closure out of fear that group homes and their presumably unruly residents might infiltrate their own neighbourhood. Others reacted to the economic implications of the closure, seeing in it the prospect of personal job loss and/or a further blow to an already ailing local economy. These concerns led many to question the philosophy of deinstitutionalization, as well as the abrupt imposition of provincial government policies without due consideration of their consequences. At the same time, disability rights advocates protested the government’s failure to embrace a vision of community living for all. Had the closure been handled in a more gradual and consultative manner, it might not have generated such an impassioned and largely negative response. Likewise, had the closure occurred during a period of economic buoyancy rather than crisis, or had the government made concrete plans to replace Tranquille with some other economic generator, the closure might not have seemed as threatening.
And yet, in fact, the decision to close Tranquille was abrupt, hastily implemented, and poorly planned, and this, more than anything else, speaks to the government’s motive: to save money. Institutions such as Tranquille were enormously expensive to maintain, not the least because they employed hundred of public sector workers, and they also tied up government capital that could be used for other purposes. This economic rationale was articulated by McCarthy on 11 July 1983, three days after the announcement that Tranquille would be closed. Defending the closure in terms of the province’s draconian budget, McCarthy said: “This budget speaks to a fragile economy, but the fact is that recovery is not only possible, it’s on its way. But it’s on its way if we downsize government. It’s on its way if we can restrain ourselves from the demands on the public purse.” As she went on to say: “We can’t spend ourselves and borrow ourselves into the future. It has to stop today” (British Columbia, Legislative Assembly 1983a, 209, 210).
In an analysis of the deinstitutionalization movement in North America, Chavon Niles (2013, 55–56) argues that the closure of state-run mental hospitals was motivated not “by humanitarian concerns for those deemed mentally ill” but rather by the “desire to cut costs.” Citing comments made by a former medical superintendent at the Queen Street Mental Health Centre in Toronto, Niles suggests that Ontario’s initial pursuit of deinstitutionalization amounted to the deliberate discharge of patients into the community “irrespective of the quality and functionality of the community support services available, rather than a carefully planned and executed policy” (68). Yet, despite this lack of adequate preparation, the state could draw on the rhetoric of humanitarianism to mask underlying economic motives: “By deinstitutionalizing patients, the government was able to save a substantial amount of money and present society with the belief that this was being done under the guise of humanitarian care for the once rejected” (68–69). These observations point to an important conclusion about deinstitutionalization: properly handled, it is actually not a cost-cutting measure. It becomes one only when the state refuses to spend the money needed to ensure that former residents of institutions are not simply “thrown out” into the community but are given the support they require in order to succeed.
In 1991, the provincial government sold the Tranquille site to a private owner, and, although it has since changed hands several times, its future remains to be seen (Fortems 2016). Institutionalization lives on in Kamloops, however, in the form of group homes nestled into local neighbourhoods. The institution is now within the city rather than next door to it. But the economic influence of these small, invisible institutions is not nearly as profound as was that of Tranquille, a total institution employing hundreds of Kamloopsians. In this way, the economic blow of deinstitutionalization to the Kamloops economy has implications for other small cities that depend to some extent on a total institution, such as a prison or a military base, for their economic stability.
As this chapter also demonstrates, Tranquille did not exist in a vacuum. Tranquille was a total institution, but it was one intimately linked to Kamloops through a web of well-travelled connections. A complex reciprocal relationship existed between Tranquille and the city of Kamloops: neither one was “a whole little city by itself.” Today, more than thirty years after the institution closed down, the memory of Tranquille endures, embedded deeply in the Kamloops psyche.
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1 “Woodlands Institution,” n.d., Inclusion BC, http://www.inclusionbc.org/our-priority-areas/disability-supports/institutions/woodlands-insitution; see also Erna Kurbegović and Colette Leung, “British Columbia’s Provincial Hospital for the Insane Is Renamed the Woodlands School,” 2013, Eugenics Archives, http://eugenicsarchive.ca/discover/connections/525e2883c6813a546900000a.
2 Harris (2010) provides a detailed account of the terms of this sale (5–6), as well as the sale of the Fortune family ranch (7). As she notes, since at least 1897, both families had been taking in tuberculosis patients as boarders, although the infected were obliged to live in tents (5).
3 Jordan Keats, “From the Inside Out: A Brief History of Tranquille,” 31 March 2008, Jordan Keats [blog], http://blog.jordankeats.com/history-of-tranquille/.
4 These interviews were conducted by the author and a research assistant. In the comments quoted, the interviewees are identified by pseudonyms.
5 “After the Asylum,” n.d., History of Madness in Canada, http://aftertheasylum.apps01.yorku.ca/en.
6 For a detailed account of the rationales for and responses to these transfers, see Lord and Hearn (1987, 119–36).
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