Fort San Sanatorium

 Also Known As: Echo Valley Conference Center, HMCS Qu'Apelle Cadet Summer Training Center, Saskatchewan Summer School of the Arts
Type: Sanatorium
Built+ Opened: 1917                     Closed: 2004 (as a conference center)
Last known status: Demolition started in 2011, completely demolished by 2018

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History of Tuberculosis and Fort San Sanatorium

Tuberculosis is an infectious disease that was a huge problem in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It is spread through the air via coughing, sneezing, spitting, etc. With societies becoming more urban and living in larger groups it was spreading quickly through populated areas. There was no cure and even with treatment the survival rate was only about 50%. The treatment for tuberculosis before antibiotics was sunshine, bed rest and good food. Patients would stay in beds and be moved out to solarium's  (sun rooms) to get as much sunlight as possible. This is why all sanatoriums had large solarium's and huge doorways to roll the beds out.

In Saskatchewan the Anti-Tuberculosis League was formed and began plans for Sanatoriums in the province. The main plan was to remove the ill from the major centers and isolate them to help them heal but also to try to prevent the disease from further spreading throughout the population. People were taken there against their will and the chances of them dying from the disease were very high.

Fort San is the oldest of the 3 tuberculosis Sanatoriums. The other two were in Saskatoon and Prince Albert and both were demolished several years ago. Construction began on The Fort Qu’Appelle Sanatorium in 1913 and it was officially opened in 1917. In its early years it was mostly self sufficient. It generated its own power and had livestock and gardens for food production, about the only thing that had to be shipped there was coal. The buildings were interconnected with steam tunnels to distribute steam and power from the power plant.

At its peak, Fort San could accommodate 358 patients and a vibrant community emerged through activities such as the drama club, the jazz band, and the internal radio program while the facility provided an environment of rest, good food, fresh air, and relaxation.

In 1946 the antibiotic Streptomycin was invented and was able to cure the vast majority of cases. Sanatoriums like the San started to become obsolete and many were closed. The disease was almost completely eliminated when drug-resistant strains started showing up in the 1980s and TB continues to be an issue to this day.

A new life for the San....

The San continued to operate as a health care facility until 1972. Part of the facility was already closed and was being used as the Saskatchewan Summer School of the Arts which started in 1967. The San continued as a school until that closed in 1991 due to lack of funding. In 1993 it became the Echo Valley Conference Centre which consisted of accommodations for groups and many facilities for meetings and gatherings. For the first time in many years it was upgraded with new roofs on several of the main buildings. Several of the 50 buildings on the site were also demolished in the early 1990’s as they weren’t required anymore and were expensive to maintain. It provided a cost effective beautiful environment for people to have gatherings but unfortunately was not utilized enough to be profitable. The Conference Centre closed its doors in September 2004. Since then site has been sold to a private developer who has let the buildings deteriorate to the point where they may not even be salvageable. The vast majority of the site is cleared now and the little that remains isn’t even worth the risk to see anymore.

Above text written by SaskUrbex

Our trips to the San....

TIMELINE:
2005/2006 - STILL ALARMED (owned by the government)
~2007 - SOLD to a private owner
2008 - OUR FIRST TIME WITH ENTRY INSIDE (no vandalism as entry was difficult)
2009 - VANDALISM AND OPENINGS (doors pushed in, windows broken, boards pulled off, etc.)
2009-2010 - MORE VANDALISM (multiple open doors and windows to enter through)
2012/2013 -  DEMOLITION OF PASQUA & MISSION WINGS, POWER PLANT, NURSES RESIDENCES, TUNNELS AND OTHER BUILDINGS
2016 -  MAIN BUILDING AND 2 OTHER BUILDINGS REMAIN (boarded and watched closely)
2017 - BUILDING DEMOLISHED (2 buildings remain near the front of the property)
2018 - ALL BUILDINGS DEMOLISHED

Our first visit to the san was when it was abandoned but before anyone had broken anything to get in and the buildings were very secure. The building was in great condition, nothing was broken, some sections even had power and everything was as it was left form the closed conference center. There were dishes still in stacks, chairs still placed around tables and bedrooms still set up. Even though it was converted into a conference center its life as a sanatorium was very obvious. It wasn't long after our first visit that people started to vandalize the building to gain access and its condition came down quickly. There was even a point where the boards were pulled off and people just walked in. It deteriorated quickly and it was hard to visit it. We stopped visiting a couple years after our first visit. 

It became a popular spot for people to visit as the owner didn't seem to care. That changed and the owner started to charge people for entering the property. It wasn't long before the owner tore down the power plant, nurses houses and tore off the pasqua wing and mission lodge wing from the main building. It sat like this for a bit and in 2017 a few other buildings were torn down. Today all that remains is the main building (no wings) and the front building at the front of the property.

Some misconceptions about the san:

• Bodies were not buried in the hills behind fort san.
• The heating plant is not a crematorium. It's a power/heating plant for all the buildings on site.
• The san was not home to constant death, yes people died but it was not a daily occurrence.
• The morgue is not in the basement but rather it was on the main floor as it was easier to move bodies out of the building. The morgue from the sanatorium was converted into the kitchen for the conference center. The people that passed away were buried in a cemetery.
• The tunnels were not body tunnels or used for people to move through them in cold weather. The tunnels were steam tunnels attached from the heating plant to the nurses houses to the main building and one other building. They heated the buildings and held other utilities. The tunnels were about 5'3 high and full of asbestos.
• Only one nursing house had actual access to the steam tunnels, others were connected by a single pipe coming in.

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Historical images + other scanned information

Historical images of Fort San (scans from film, originally from Sask Archives)
​Other images/scans from my personal collection

Fort San (Main Buildings)

When we arrived at Fort San in 2008 is was a bustling place. There were working outside demolishing some of the smaller old buildings and some people were walking the grounds. We wanted to attempt to get in through the steam tunnels as we knew they had to connect to the main building. The main buildings were still very secured but the little houses were destroyed and ransacked. We entered the houses looking for one to be attached to the tunnels. Most had no access to the tunnels, but while moving around one of the houses we moved a stove out of the way to access the basement and there was a rush of cold air - this was the entrance to the tunnels. Since the ladder was broken we used an old crate to get down - once down we found an small entrance in the wall attached to the steam tunnels.

We brought p100 masks and clothing to keep up covered as we knew there was asbestos. We entered the tunnels and it was a good thing we brought masks because the asbestos was everywhere. It was on the ground, falling off pipes and floating everywhere. The tunnels were in rough shape and in one part even partially collapsed. We first went right to document the power plant and then headed back down the tunnels to the main buildings.

Our first building to visit was the main building, which was renovated for the conference center, so trying to visualize it as a hospital was hard.  We covered the entire building spending hours photographing and documenting as much as we could. I enjoyed photographing the old solarium's as well as the old hallways. It was easy to picture patients in beds once you got to the other wings off the main building. Before we left we also checked out the doctors residence which has been abandoned for years. Although very neat it was in rough shape and the elements had not been easy on it.

Did you know?  Popular belief is that the morgue was in the basement of the san. The basement area was mostly a crawl space used for storage and access to the steam tunnels (which ran the heating plant). When people passed away were placed in the morgue until they were picked up to be moved to the local cemetary. Bodies were not buried in the hills like some people believe. The morgue was actually converted into the kitchen for the conference center - you could still see where the fridges were and the back door to move the bodies out into a vehicle for transportation to the graveyard.

The pictures below are a mixture from many different trips in no particular order. Its condition varies from excellent to destroyed.

Fort San (other buildings)

Fort san was not just a main building with 2 wings attached to it. It has nurses residence houses, doctors houses, a heating plant, other pavilion buildings, out buildings, auditorium and more. It used to be a large complex with many pavilions but most were demolished many years ago. As the state of fort san went down hill the buildings got demolished and one by one the sit was only left with the main building and a small building at the entrance of the sit. One of the doctors houses remains but is lived in and there may be one other doctors residence remaining but we are not sure of its current status.

Pictures are from various trips. They are in no particular order.