Here's how Parks Canada keeps these Kissing Buildings from collapsing

Building on permafrost has always been a challenge in the north. Today, engineers have ways to reduce the damage, but during Yukon's gold rush, those solutions didn't exist. In Dawson City, Parks Canada took us inside a historic landmark that's been shifting with the frozen ground beneath it, and showed us what it takes to keep the building standing. So it's dark in here. Just be aware. And we can go in as far as we want to go. Beware. There's things to bang your heads on, there's tripping hazards, and it's dark. So you can see the intervention that Parks Canada has undertaken to keep these buildings standing. Internal timber structure all the way up to the ceiling, braced down to the floor, that's what's holding this building up. The external walls and facade hang off of this internal bracing. And you can really tell the heave in frost from the permafrost in the very uneven floor. It's quite a slope. Yeah, like this is just permafrost. That's just permafrost. So when you think of permafrost, it's just like it's an undulating Thank you. Moving mass under the surface of the town and so interventions like pilings to build a foundation on, the frost will actively move those pilings up and that's kind of what you're seeing here. Whatever was originally thought to be a stable place to build has not proven to be an effective long term strategy. Not at all. You can see that. So it's quite something being inside. Yeah, it is quite something. You can still see the layers of history as well. There's an original post showing what this hotel would have looked like. And then, of course, the modern intervention throughout. So I feel like it's, I mean, it's important to look at the compare and contrast of, you know, some of the buildings that have had a full intervention, like what we'll see at the Palace Grand. And this one, because you can really... appreciate what it takes for a full-blown restoration and I don't think Spruce like this will never see that level of intervention like it's too far gone but also the expense would be astronomical. Well even just seeing how much of this internal structure that you've built to keep it from collapsing this is not I'm not a carpenter but just with my eyes it looks very big. It's no small feat it's a building within a building yeah basically. And you're working against the lean of the structure, you know, it's not plumb, ideally you're building everything plumb, so you're adapting these internal bracing systems to a building that's out of square, out of plumb, yet trying to keep it that way, so there's a lot of forces at play. And how often do you have to come back and adjust any of this bracing? Quite often, as you can see the ground's constantly moving, so you're always looking to make sure that things aren't detaching. Lifting off the pads that they're still touching the ceiling above so we're in here twice a year looking and if needing adjusting Yeah, so it's it's it's a lot of maintenance to keep this looking the way it does Yeah, which is again funny because from the outside it looks quite Ramshackle, which is the whole point. But on the inside, there's so much structure keeping it exactly like that as opposed to falling in on itself. And that's for whatever reason, it's 14 degrees of a lean and we are holding it there. And it was probably there when the parks took over this building in the 70s. And we've decided that that's what we want. And so we're holding it there. You know, ideally, the building's plumb. Easier to maintain, however, the attraction is the leaning, the story of the permafrost and the climate, northern environment, so we are still trying to tell that story with this internal bracing. I was, sorry, I was lost in this building two years ago and I can't believe, um, that back end is really falling off. It used to be flat two years ago, like it's crazy. So, and it's very active. Is there a point of no return with this? Well, we're asking ourselves that same question. And how far do we want to go with maintaining this building as it is and other buildings too? Because it is a lot of work to do this. And at one point, we may realize that it is no longer safe to. to work on this structure or for visitors to even observe it from the outside so yes the short answer there is a point of no return and we're asking ourselves internally those same questions and when do we reach that we don't know yet we're still actively maintaining these structures because we love to tell the story.