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On Oct. 3, 1918, The Guardian reported the previous evening of Mary Herrell at the Charlottetown Hospital. She had fallen ill in the past, while returning from Boston, suffering from, "that form of influenza now prevails in the New England States."
Although we may not know for sure, that Mary Herrell may have been the Island's "patient zero" is certainly plausible, given her Boston excursion. Later research would confirm that city's role, during September 1918, as a North American epicenter of an influenza pandemic which would, in the coming year, kill tens of millions – some estimates say as many as 100 million – worldwide. War's mass movements of military personnel and laborers fanned the plague's wildfire spread across oceans and continents.
In P.E.I., as elsewhere, the disease struck with terrifying speed, and in particular, it has been reported that they are in their 20s and 30s.
The Guardian has seen the situation in the past. On Oct. 2 – the very day Mary Herrell succumbed to the pandemic – an editorial actually mocked those vigilant for the new flu: "Some nervous people in this province are already canvassing their systems for the symptoms of Spanish Influenza with the result that those who have contracted a cold believe they have the dreaded disease. "
The lead column of Oct. 18 derided the closure of the churches and schools and the suspension of public meetings and ridiculed the pandemic as psychosomatic hysteria: "Remove fear and Spanish Influenza will vanish as quickly as she cam."
Decades later, eminent Island historian Edward MacDonald would condemn this appalling passage with the crisp observation: "Disbelief was no defense."
That said, practical "defense" options were few. No vaccine or effective treatment, and there is little capacity, either provincially or federally, to plan or deliver a robust public health response. The initial laconic attitude of the Guardian editorial page of the accounts of limited and fragmentary government measures. From mid-October, the influenza-related official notices appear to be most often stern reminders of Charlottetown 's public and to be able to provide medical care. emergencies arising from the present epidemic "- belief in whiskey's medicinal powers seems to have been remarkably widespread.
There were also many sanitary regulations, and they were "thoroughly washed and cleaned," and a few calls for volunteer nurses. The most telling, however, was the provincial government's advice on local boards of health and others working on the epidemic, providing either encouragement or practical advice, but rather an admonition that the province would only "Too poor to provide their own livelihood. … In all other cases, persons must provide their own necessities,
It would be unfair, however, not to record the good with bad. On Oct. 22, under the headline, "To Prevent the Importance of Flu," The Guardian reported on the Aubin Arsenault's telegram to Canada's director general of public health, requesting "necessary action" at the EPI of persons of "infected areas" of the mainland. "In response, medical inspections were implemented on PEI-bound trains in New Brunswick. Mark Humphries' thoroughly-researched 2013 book on Canada's 1918-19 pandemic response, "The Last Plague", credits this de facto "provincial quarantine" with a markedly lower death rate from the flu in P.E.I. than elsewhere in the Maritimes.
The Guardian, for its part, seems to have repented its early editorial insouciance as the month progressed. A column on Oct. 25 certainly appealing to readers' better angels: "We have had our hearts, we have had many years of sorrow over the years, during the past few weeks. Have you been so touched … by the sympathy which digs down to the side of the world who are too poor … to buy medicine for the sick who are unable to buy for themselves, to give help wherever help is needed …? "In the next Saturday issue, rather than demanding church re-opening, The Guardian instead printed "sermonettes" solicited from leading Island clergy, Catholic and Protestant, so that readers might enjoy a "Service at Home."
Simon Lloyd is librarian responsible for the P.E.I. collection at the University of Prince Edward Island Robertson Library and Archives. This is part of a monthly series of lookbacks at the First World War, and is available on the web site.
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