Spanish Flu in Edmonton

By: Ryan Krawchuk

What was life in Edmonton like during the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918?

I am writing this article to remind all Edmontonians that we have been through something similar in the past, and to emphatically state that we will get through this again.

Posing shoulder-to-shoulder in front of the government telephone building, using white gauss masks. Beneath the mask, one woman appears to be smiling.

A century ago, four female operators in High River became the face of the Spanish Flue pandemic in Alberta. Killing more than 50 million people, more than the entire first world war, the Spanish Flue killed about 3,300 Albertans.

This was a time before television, before air travel, and antibiotics. Large portions of society had to shut down to contain the virus. Schools, places of worship, theatres all shut down. As this was during prohibition, bars and lounges were already closed.

"It just spread like wildfire," said Edmonton historian Shirley Lowe. "It was a particularly virulent and very contagious virus. It killed very quickly."

From the 1730s to the 1870s, contagious diseases swept through the region with regularity, but the Spanish Flu was Edmonton's first modern pandemic.

Spanish Flu first showed its head on North-American soil at a Kansas military base in March 1918, with the virus arriving in Canada the following September. On September 24, 1918, the headline "Spanish Influenza Taking Many Lives in the East. Epidemic Still Spreading." appeared in the Edmonton Journal.

On October 4th, 1918, A.G. MacKay, the Alberta Health Minister, warned that 30 to 40 perfect of the population would likely catch the flu. MacKay, himself, later died of the illness. Spanish Flu tended to kill the young and fit, causing pneumonia only a few days after contracting the virus. The first cases were found in Drumheller, arriving in Edmonton by mid-October.

Theatres in the city purchased full-page articles in local newspapers claiming, "we are leaving no stone unturned to make our Theatres thoroughly safe and sanitary places for public attendance."

On October 18, 1918, the Edmonton Board of Health ordered all public gatherings to be cancelled, all schools to close their doors, and places of worship to shut down. Masks became mandatory with instructions to make them, out of cheesecloth, printed in newspapers.

In the October 19 issue of the Edmonton Journal, 41 cases were reported under quarantine, including a group of soldiers who had travelled on a troop train. Only four days later, Alberta reported 1,035 cases, with 70 in Edmonton.

Edmonton's first death was on October 24th. Schools and hospitals were overrun with the sick, topping 2,000 by that point. The University of Alberta even converted Pembina Hall into a hospital.

In an effort to reduce the spread, businesses, stores, and offices were ordered to stay closed until 1pm, to give people time to help "stamping out the flu epidemic" in their communities.

Our grandparents and great-grandparents were extremely community-oriented. Volunteer work boomed. Relief districts were set up. At the end of his term, Edmonton Mayor Harry Marshall Erskine Evans and local clergy divided the city into more than a dozen districts centred on an empty neighbourhood school. The school was used as a headquarters. Volunteers, many of whom were young and unmarried, provided services for the sick including laundry, cooking and food delivery, nursing, and child care. Most of the volunteers wore only a cheesecloth mask (changed every few hours) and a nursing smock. Many of these relief volunteers also became infected with the flu.

One major difference, compared to our current epidemic, was that there was no historical evidence of hoarding supplies during the crisis.

There were 9,206 cases of the Spanish Flu reported in Alberta by November 5, 1918. Only six days later, the Armistice in the First World War was declared, and officials were unable to curtail the exultation of the masses. There were parades, the people wearing masks. The masks were not enough to prevent further spread, however. Three days later, 58 new cases were reported in Edmonton.

The pandemic eventually died out. Just over a year from the first reported case on North-American soil, in May 1919, Edmonton reported no cases of the flu.

Overall, the Spanish flu affected 7,914 (or 13% of the total population) with 615 deaths. 

We survived the Spanish Flu pandemic and can do so again. Many of the things we are seeing in the news today, protests against masks, public gatherings without appropriate PPE, etc, were paralleled in the past with tragic results. Our medicine and medical professionals are better equipped now to handle a small spread, but it could very easily spill over our capacity.

The main takeaway that I would like to convey with this article is simply this, do what you can, as our grandparents and great-grandparents did, to help stop the spread and make life easier for each other. Wearing a mask and social-distancing should not be too much to ask. We will survive and prosper if we can simply follow the rules set out for us and help each other out.