The Spanish flu belted Canada in four waves between 1918 and 1920. Assiniboia experienced the dramatic affects of the pandemic sweeping through the world in 1918, beginning in mid-October. In total, the pandemic at the beginning of the 20th century, killed 55,000 people in Canada, mostly adults aged 20-40.
Those deaths added to the 60,000 Canadian service personnel killed in action during the First World War from 1914-18. At this time, there were no vaccines or treatments for the virus creating havoc as the world sought healing from the devastating battles in Europe.
Influenza first entered Canada during the spring of 1918, then in the autumn of 1918, when a mutation of the virus produced an extremely contagious version. This second wave caused 90 per cent of the deaths throughout the pandemic spanning three years. Succeeding upsurges of influenza happened in the spring of 1919 then in the spring of 1920. The deaths – estimated at somewhere between 50 and 100 million – claimed the lives of an estimated 2.5-5 per cent of global inhabitants.
In Canada, the disease reached the port cities of Québec City, Montréal and Halifax, then spread out to the prairies in the fall of 1918. Murdock Matheson in the book Heritage ’85 Town of Assiniboia said “In Assiniboia, from newspapers and other sources, we learned of its rapid advance westward from Europe to America and from eastern Canada westward toward Saskatchewan.”
When the pandemic reached Assiniboia from October-November 1918, the Assiniboia Town Council took immediate action. The town didn’t have a hospital at the time, so as the disease ripped through town, the town’s leaders decided to transform the Fourth Avenue School into a care centre. Five of the six classrooms became hospital rooms, with the remaining room used as a kitchen.
“The hospital rooms, some for the men and some for the women patients, were crowded with cots and each cot was occupied,” Matheson recollected.
At this time, there were three doctors in Assiniboia – two brothers, the Drs. Ross, joined by Doctor Gemmel. The medical professionals in charge of this temporary hospital were assisted by several female and male nurses from the community.
Reverend Watson of the Methodist Church acted as the director of the impromptu hospital.
Quarantining and social distancing weren’t so important in 1918 as they are in the spring of 2020. Within six weeks, just as the virus swept out of Assiniboia, the students were quickly called back to classes.
The Fourth Avenue School, recorded as officially being used as an emergency hospital between October 17 to December 6, 1918, converted back into being a school before the year ended.
In Murdock Matheson’s words “When the flu finally subsided at the end of five weeks, the Town Council paid for reclaiming and repainting the entire interior of the school building and the classes were resumed at the end of the sixth week.”
