Photo Credit: (Left)Global News; (Right)Heritage Toronto
The sneaky Coronavirus was in our face on Friday, March 13 last year. That’s when the first lockdown started, bringing with it uncertainty and fear.
I didn’t even need to flip through my calendar to recall the lockdown date; it is seared in my memory. So what were we doing that day? What everyone else in Stouffville was doing—shopping and prepping for the unknown. That day there were 137,703 cases of the virus world-wide; now there are over 120 million. At the store, we took a photo of our shopping cart, heaped high enough with groceries and supplies to defy gravity.
That got me to thinking about how things were during the 1918 Spanish Flu Pandemic which lasted till 1920. A look through some early editions of the Stouffville Tribune and other sources painted a fascinating picture of those times. Like many places in Canada, Stouffville and Whitchurch were still farming communities. The Stouffville Tribune carried ads for farm machinery and ran articles on good farming and planting practices and gardening tips. People skilled in the art of shoeing horses were becoming scarcer, as more newfangled motor cars were seen around the area. While most of us are used to full grocery store shelves, rationing and food shortages were a reality in 1918, after almost four years of war. People must have rejoiced when they opened their local paper to read, “The Food Board announces there will be sufficient sugar in the country for the preserving and canning season….To make sure of this, however, strict conservation will be necessary in the meantime”.
The flu was termed “Spanish” because that country was neutral during the First World War and was free to report on the new illness. That gave the impression that it was most severe there. Other countries minimized news of the flu to keep up morale.
Like today’s COVID-19, the Spanish flu came in waves. The first milder wave started in the spring of 1918; the most severe one was that fall, followed by another wave early in the New Year. The virus had one last hurrah early in 1920. It was one misery heaped on another. When the flu began its destruction, people had already been rattled by almost four wartime years, losing about 16 million loved ones. Then the flu took an estimated 100 million more lives. In our young Canada of under nine million people, 50,000 lost their lives to that virus. The flu hitched an unseen ride with troops as they headed overseas and moved throughout North America and Europe. Most of the people it killed were in the prime of their lives. Many children were left orphaned. There was no vaccine or effective treatment.
And what about the first pandemic Christmas? With 60 cases of flu recorded the week before Christmas Eve in Stouffville, health officials urged people not to do last-minute Christmas shopping. They were also encouraged to not overcrowd the local post office. Although they didn’t call it social distancing then, it does sound awfully familiar. Contrast that with this past Christmas which saw us giving up festive gatherings and instead pushing our dinners onto our front porches or back decks to be picked up by family and friends. Then they went home. But we could feel less lonely just by opening our computers and ZOOMing our meals and gift-opening together.
It is interesting to see that schools sometimes had to be closed. The attendance register from Whitchurch-Stouffville S.S#10 (Bloomington) had no entries except the word FLU, written in large letters, during the weeks from Oct. 21st to Nov. 11, 1918.
Mask wearing became part of the human landscape then as now. Old photos show rows of masked soldiers marching along, and doctors, nurses, farmers and fashionable young women wearing masks, hoping to protect themselves from the contagion. Many people complied with mask wearing, lest they be labelled a ‘mask slacker’. Others refused and anti-mask leagues sprang up. Cases rose alarmingly near the end of 1918, probably spurred on by all the crowded celebrations marking the victorious end to the First World War.
News of the war dominated the Stouffville newspapers. There were articles on the usefulness of keeping on the cavalry for war and the extent of enemy spying in Allied lands. One story titled “Seagulls detect U-boats”, explained how seagulls gathered around the ripples left on the water by U-boots which came too close to the ocean’s surface. Well into 1919, there were stories on the bravery of the troops, the defeat of the enemy and the slow road back to peace.
The “boys” overseas were on everyone’s mind. Various fundraisers were held for them. In the June 6, 1918 Stouffville Tribune, residents were encouraged to attend “A three act drama, Miss Fearless & Co.”, with the proceeds from that June 14 presentation in the Auditorium, Stouffville, going “…to purchase comforts for our boys and your boys. Admission 25 cents. Reserved seats 35 cents. Do your bit.”
When the boys came home, there were celebration evenings for them in town.
Social notices chronicled who visited their mother, who invited their friends for Sunday dinner, and who bought a car, as well as births, deaths and weddings. Sometimes the pandemic was mentioned: “Mr. R. P. Coulson, who is recovering from a severe attack of “Flu” has moved back to Stouffville for the summer”. Then there was this gem: “Mr. and Mrs. J. B. Hoover, Mr. E. Lehman and Mr. T. Nighswander motored to Toronto on Friday last,” (from the May 1/1919 Stouffville Tribune).
After it was all over, the world had changed. The Canadian government founded the Department of Health. With doctors, nurses and many soldiers away at war, the provincial Board of Health formed an “Ontario Emergency Volunteer Health Auxiliary” in Toronto early in the pandemic. Volunteer nurses were trained at the Parliament Buildings in Toronto to work together with local people, mainly women, from neighbourhoods, schools and churches to bring medical aid, food and supplies to the sick. The role of women kept changing. Many were able to vote in Canadian federal elections and some provincial ones by 1918 and were on their way to entering the work force in greater numbers.
I got the sense that no matter what was thrown their way, people kept on with their lives and thrived. As the economy grew, the Roaring 20s brought a renewed zest for life. Now we are in our own Roaring 20’s, with movements afoot to help us respect each other more. We look forward to vaccinations that will help the economy to reopen and allow people to again hug each other, have lunch together and play with their grandchildren—without looking over their shoulder in fear of the virus. We now appreciate what we have always taken for granted.
Sources: Stouffville Tribune 1918 and 1919; YRDSB Museum and Archives Collection; Parks Canada; Archives.gov.on.ca; TVO.org, When the Spanish Flu Came to Ontario by Jamie Bradburn; A hardship of the merchants and the people alike during the 1918 flu pandemic by Jamie Bradburn; Toronto Daily Star, Christine Sismondo, March 13/20.
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