Saskatchewan History, Vol. 49, No. 1, Spring 1997

'"The Bitter Flats": The 1918 Influenza Epidemic in Saskatchewan,' by Maureen Lux

The general store at Paradise Hill sat empty except for the dead bodies of the store-keeper and his wife. Inside a nearby tent there were three more victims. The eerie silence was only broken by the sounds of a young boy digging graves for his dead mother, father, brother and sister¹. Sadly, scenes like these were not uncommon in Saskatchewan at the end of the Great War. Between 1918 and 1920 more than 5,000 lives were lost in the province, not on any battlefield, but in their own homes, victims of a silent but deadly enemy.

Viruses have a way of grabbing our attention. Without warning they descend, invade our cells, mutate, and spread. They rely on human cells for survival, but very often kill in the process. Despite our sophisticated medical technology, viruses seem to understand us much better than we understand them. Throughout history disease has created havoc on a grand scale, toppling empire and emptying continents, reducing many thousands to a quiet and desperate death. But by 1918 the most frightening epidemic killers, plague and smallpox, had been tamed. Then, the midst of war, an epidemic swept the world, cutting down victims faster and more efficiently than even the massed might of the world's armies. Even more incredible, this new killer was influenza, the flu, la grippe - a common complaint as old as humankind, familiar and, until then, fairly harmless.

The so-called "Spanish" influenza killed between 50 and 100 million people worldwide². At least 50,000 Canadians died from influenza, more than all the battlefield deaths combined. The epidemic crossed the Atlantic to Canada aboard the troop ships, and then made its way to the prairies along the transcontinental railways just as so many immigrants had before. It was carried by Canadian soldiers who, while being transferred from quarantined barracks in Quebec City to Vancouver, spread the virus along the way in Toronto, Winnipeg, Regina, Calgary and, finally, Vancouver³. From these centres the flu spread rapidly throughout the country.

The influenza epidemic humbled the medical profession, coming as it did on the heels of the conquest of the great contagious diseases. It was an apparently familiar disease run rampant. Attack was sudden. A "typical" case of influenza-pneumonia began with sudden weakness, pain and chills. Coughing produced "quantities of blood stained expectoration or nearly pure dark blood . . . the face and fingers cyanosed, active delirium came on . . . the tongue dry and brown, the whole surface of the body blue, the temperature rapidly fell and the patient died from failure of the respiratory system⁴." The clinical nature of the description barely disguises the terror. Influenza's real threat was its propensity to develop into pneumonia, the great killer in the era before antibiotics. It was not until 1933 that the human influenza virus was isolated. Epidemic influenza also terrorized the world because it preferred young adults. In Saskatchewan more than sixty percent of those who died from influenza were between twenty-five to forty years old⁵.

Epidemic influenza sparked a crisis of another kind. Who was responsible for disease control? As late as August 1918 there was confusion between the federal departments of Immigration, Agriculture, and Marine as to who was responsible for containing influenza at the border. Once influenza began to spread it became a provincial responsibility.

* For the full article please contact the Saskatchewan History Magazine at info.saskatoon@archives.gov.sk.ca

(1). Battleford Press, 28 November 1918, 1

(2). The name "Spanish" influenza resulted from Spain's neutrality during the war. Spain, unlike other European countries, did not censor news of the epidemic's destruction

(3). Report of the Department of Health, Winnipeg, 1918, 11; Janice Dicken McGinnis, "The Impact of Epidemic Influenza: Canada, 1918-1919," in S.E.D. Shortt (ed.), Medicine in Canadian Society, (Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, 1981), 451

(4). E.A. Robertson, M.D., Cpt. CAMC, "Clinical Notes on the Influenza Epidemic Occurring in the Quebec Garrison," Canadian Medical Association Journal (hereafter CMAJ), vol. 9, February 1919, 156

(5). Saskatchewan Bureau of Public Health (hereafter SBPH), Annual Report 1917-1918, 79, Table LI. Of a total 5,040 reported deaths, 32.7% were 20-29 years old, and 27.9% were 30-39 years old

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