Jonny Wakefield CALGARY SUN POSTMEDIA Published:March 23, 2020
Alberta Government Telephones operators in High River
wore compulsory masks during the 1918 Spanish flu epidemic.
From left to right: Gladys Stephenson, Cora Stephenson,
Addie McDonald and Annie Grisdale
GLENBOW ARCHIVES
They pose shoulder-to-shoulder in the doorway of the government telephone building, white gauze masks covering their faces from the cheekbones down. Though rendered in black and white, their eyes are piercing. Beneath her mask, one of the women appears to smile.
More than 100 years ago, four female telephone operators in High River became the face of the Spanish flu pandemic in Alberta. The flu ultimately killed around 50 million people — more than the entire First World War — among them 3,300 Albertans.
For the foreseeable future, Albertans living under the threat of COVID-19 will see circumstances that wouldn’t be unfamiliar to those who survived the 1918 pandemic. It was a time before television, regular commercial air travel, and antibiotics, but the parallels to today are striking.
Swathes of society shut down in an effort to contain the virus. Health officials urged people to stay home. Schools, theatres and places of worship closed. Bars would have been ordered to shut their doors, too, if prohibition hadn’t shuttered them two years earlier.
“It just spread like wildfire,” said Edmonton historian Shirley Lowe. “It was a particularly virulent and very contagious virus. It killed very quickly.”
Spanish flu was Edmonton’s first modern pandemic. Introduced infectious disease, though, had been a defining feature of life on the Canadian prairies since the fur trade. From the 1730s to the 1870s, contagious diseases “swept through the region with regularity,” James Daschuk wrote in Clearing the Plains, his study of the historic roots of health disparities between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Canadians.
Smallpox was a major killer. An outbreak in 1870 showed what we now call social distancing in action. During the outbreak, the death rate among Indigenous people varied tremendously depending on whether Catholics or Protestants ministered to their communities.
Protestants usually told their communities to disperse into the bush when news of an epidemic arrived. Catholics, on the other hand, “dealt with the suffering by bringing their communities together,” Daschuk wrote. As a result, Indigenous communities near Catholic missions suffered especially appalling death rates.
The first recorded case of Spanish flu in North America was an American soldier at a Kansas military base in March 1918. The virus arrived in Canada the following September. The Edmonton Journal’s first headline about the epidemic came Sept. 24, 1918: “Spanish Influenza Taking Many Lives in the East. Epidemic Still Spreading.
On Oct. 4, Alberta Health Minister A.G. MacKay warned that 30-40 per cent of the population would likely catch the virus (MacKay himself later died of complications from the illness.)
Spanish flu tended to kill the young and fit. The real killer was often pneumonia, which typically set in a few days after the virus.
“There are all kinds of stories about people who were strong, healthy people and then they were dead,” said Lowe.
The first confirmed Alberta cases were in Drumheller. By mid-October, Edmonton was on edge.
City theatres purchased a full-page ad in the Journal, declaring they were “leaving no stone unturned to make our Theatres thoroughly safe and sanitary places for public attendance.”
They were forced to close anyway on Oct. 18, when the Edmonton Board of Health banned public gatherings and ordered schools and churches to shut their doors. Gauze masks became mandatory — the Journal even printed instructions for how to make one out of cheesecloth.
They pose shoulder-to-shoulder in the doorway of the government telephone building, white gauze masks covering their faces from the cheekbones down. Though rendered in black and white, their eyes are piercing. Beneath her mask, one of the women appears to smile.
More than 100 years ago, four female telephone operators in High River became the face of the Spanish flu pandemic in Alberta. The flu ultimately killed around 50 million people — more than the entire First World War — among them 3,300 Albertans.
For the foreseeable future, Albertans living under the threat of COVID-19 will see circumstances that wouldn’t be unfamiliar to those who survived the 1918 pandemic. It was a time before television, regular commercial air travel, and antibiotics, but the parallels to today are striking.
Swathes of society shut down in an effort to contain the virus. Health officials urged people to stay home. Schools, theatres and places of worship closed. Bars would have been ordered to shut their doors, too, if prohibition hadn’t shuttered them two years earlier.
“It just spread like wildfire,” said Edmonton historian Shirley Lowe. “It was a particularly virulent and very contagious virus. It killed very quickly.”
Spanish flu was Edmonton’s first modern pandemic. Introduced infectious disease, though, had been a defining feature of life on the Canadian prairies since the fur trade. From the 1730s to the 1870s, contagious diseases “swept through the region with regularity,” James Daschuk wrote in Clearing the Plains, his study of the historic roots of health disparities between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Canadians.
Smallpox was a major killer. An outbreak in 1870 showed what we now call social distancing in action. During the outbreak, the death rate among Indigenous people varied tremendously depending on whether Catholics or Protestants ministered to their communities.
Protestants usually told their communities to disperse into the bush when news of an epidemic arrived. Catholics, on the other hand, “dealt with the suffering by bringing their communities together,” Daschuk wrote. As a result, Indigenous communities near Catholic missions suffered especially appalling death rates.
The first recorded case of Spanish flu in North America was an American soldier at a Kansas military base in March 1918. The virus arrived in Canada the following September. The Edmonton Journal’s first headline about the epidemic came Sept. 24, 1918: “Spanish Influenza Taking Many Lives in the East. Epidemic Still Spreading.
On Oct. 4, Alberta Health Minister A.G. MacKay warned that 30-40 per cent of the population would likely catch the virus (MacKay himself later died of complications from the illness.)
Spanish flu tended to kill the young and fit. The real killer was often pneumonia, which typically set in a few days after the virus.
“There are all kinds of stories about people who were strong, healthy people and then they were dead,” said Lowe.
The first confirmed Alberta cases were in Drumheller. By mid-October, Edmonton was on edge.
City theatres purchased a full-page ad in the Journal, declaring they were “leaving no stone unturned to make our Theatres thoroughly safe and sanitary places for public attendance.”
They were forced to close anyway on Oct. 18, when the Edmonton Board of Health banned public gatherings and ordered schools and churches to shut their doors. Gauze masks became mandatory — the Journal even printed instructions for how to make one out of cheesecloth.
1918 board of health influenza poster. Submitted / GLENBOW ARCHIVES
Reports began to roll in of local flu cases. On Oct. 19, the Journal reported 41 cases under quarantine, including a group of soldiers who had travelled on a troop train. Four days later, there were 1,035 cases in Alberta, 70 of them in Edmonton.
News of Edmonton’s first deaths came Oct. 24. Schools and hospitals were crowded with the sick — some 2,000 by that point. The University of Alberta converted Pembina Hall into a hospital.
Businesses struggled to stay open. The government forced stores and offices to remain closed until 1 p.m., historian Tom Monto wrote in Old Strathcona Before the Great Depression, to give employees time to help in “stamping out the flu epidemic” in their communities.
Suzanna Wagner, a history masters student at the U of A, studied Edmonton’s response to the flu for a project on its 100th anniversary. What struck her most was the grassroots response to the pandemic.
“There was a tremendous volunteer network set up,” she said.
One innovation was the relief districts. During the crisis, Edmonton’s mayor and local clergy divided the city into more than a dozen districts centred on an (empty) neighbourhood school.
“They used the schools as a headquarters,” Wagner said.
An army of volunteers — many of them young, unmarried women — provided services for the sick, including nursing, child care, laundry, cooking and food delivery. Many of the relief workers themselves fell ill.
“This was dangerous work,” said Wager.
Most wore only a cheesecloth mask — changed every few hours — and a standard nursing smock. There were, like today, debates about the efficacy of mask wearing. Rubber gloves did exist, but it’s unclear if local health providers used them.
Wagner notably found no evidence of hoarding during the 1918 outbreak.
By November 5, 1918, there were 9,206 Spanish flu cases in Alberta. Six days later, Armistice in the First World War was declared, and officials could not contain the jubilation. Photographs of local victory parades show revellers wearing flu masks, but they weren’t enough contain the spread. Three days later, there were 58 new cases in Edmonton.
A victory parade on Jasper Avenue and 101 Street following
the allied victory over Germany in World War I. Originally
published in the Edmonton Journal on Tuesday, Nov. 12, 1918.
John Lucas (COPY SHOT) / City of Edmonton Archives
Wagner said the flu eventually petered out. On November 30, the government lifted bans on public gatherings. The flu flared up once social isolation measures came to an end, but by May 1919, there were no cases in Edmonton, Wagner says.
The illness returned the following two winters, but she said those were much smaller outbreaks with minimal societal disruption.
In the end, 7,914 Edmontonians were treated for the flu. A total of 615 died.
Scholars continue to debate why the flu isn’t better remembered. One theory, Wagner said, is people were simply exhausted from the war.
“The war seemed more crucial, so that’s what they chose to put their time and energy into remembering.”
Another theory is early 20th-century society didn’t really honour the work of women.
“Most of the actual care that happened during the flu was done by women — doctors couldn’t do a heck of a lot, it was mostly nursing care that was needed,” Wagner said.
There may have been a feeling “that that didn’t merit remembrance in the same way the actions of men did.”
For Wagner, watching COVID-19 play out after studying the Spanish flu has been surreal.
“It’s kind of scary to see the thing you’ve studied come and happen in (your) lifetime,” she said.
“I’m hoping that we end up with the same kind of volunteer ethos that we saw in 1918,” Wagner added, stressing that in the case of COVID-19, that means practising social distancing and doing whatever you can to stop the spread of the virus.
“Because that’s a tremendously hopeful story.”
— With files from Voice of a City, The Edmonton Journal’s First Century
Wagner said the flu eventually petered out. On November 30, the government lifted bans on public gatherings. The flu flared up once social isolation measures came to an end, but by May 1919, there were no cases in Edmonton, Wagner says.
The illness returned the following two winters, but she said those were much smaller outbreaks with minimal societal disruption.
In the end, 7,914 Edmontonians were treated for the flu. A total of 615 died.
Scholars continue to debate why the flu isn’t better remembered. One theory, Wagner said, is people were simply exhausted from the war.
“The war seemed more crucial, so that’s what they chose to put their time and energy into remembering.”
Another theory is early 20th-century society didn’t really honour the work of women.
“Most of the actual care that happened during the flu was done by women — doctors couldn’t do a heck of a lot, it was mostly nursing care that was needed,” Wagner said.
There may have been a feeling “that that didn’t merit remembrance in the same way the actions of men did.”
For Wagner, watching COVID-19 play out after studying the Spanish flu has been surreal.
“It’s kind of scary to see the thing you’ve studied come and happen in (your) lifetime,” she said.
“I’m hoping that we end up with the same kind of volunteer ethos that we saw in 1918,” Wagner added, stressing that in the case of COVID-19, that means practising social distancing and doing whatever you can to stop the spread of the virus.
“Because that’s a tremendously hopeful story.”
— With files from Voice of a City, The Edmonton Journal’s First Century
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