Why not visit the West Burnaby Nonspecific Sickhouse? Conveniently located in that municipality to the west of Burnaby, West Burnaby, WBNS has much to discover, and much to explore.

Start at the bottom. Most of the buildings of the Sickhouse are connected by an underground network of corridors. This “tunnel” level, accessible from many stairwells and elevators, is no doubt technically off-limits to the public, but the few signs making this explicit are easily ignorable.

Go in the early evening on a weekend, and you won’t run into many people.

Security guards travel in packs of three, and smile sheepishly without much eye contact. In fact, they are your friends: like couriers with undelivered mail, they leave little slips on insecure and ajar doors, which are presumably intended for whoever is responsible for the room or space, but are also useful opportunity-flags for the urban explorer.

The Tunnel level not only gets you into the elevators and stairwells of various buildings, it is a destination in its own right. Low-ceilinged, utilitarian, hot, and pipey, these hallways are deliciously homely, and offer a nice grungy contrast to the sterilized public areas.

The Tunnel level is also home to service elevators, storage rooms for beds and other equipment, roaming forklifts, mechanical rooms, a print shop, laundry rooms, and the anuses of garbage and biomedical waste chutes.