Discussions

The first Manitoba victims to die from “Spanish Flu” in 1918 were two soldiers who had returned from the War in Europe, and were housed in the IODE Convalescent home in Winnipeg, and had died on October 3rd as stated in an earlier post by Mr. C.  
 
It seems to be the way with Flu, but the Spanish Flu did not start in Spain but at a military camp in Fort Riley Kansas on March 11th 1918. Owing to War time information restrictions the Flu was not reported world wide until it hit Spain who did not have such restrictions, and thus gave the flu its name.  
 
After ten days had elapsed since the Flu deaths in Winnipeg Brandon’s Dr. E. S. Bolton advised city council that his main concern was with the districts heavier than usual number of Diphtheria cases, but he predicted the Flu with its symptoms that included headache, fever, and an inflamed throat was bound to arrive soon in Brandon. Only hours after his statement the plague struck down seven community residents.  
 
On Sunday, October 13th civic authorities banned all gatherings, Churches and Schools were closed, public assemblies became unlawful. Municipalities were ordered to treat patients in their own communities, while College students who had returned home for the Thanksgiving were banned from returning to classes.  
 
The Sixth Street, and Victoria Avenue home of Mr. Joseph Cornell was converted into convalescent quarters. Columns in ‘The Sun’ contained brief spiritual messages from city Ministers, and the Allen Theatre wasted advertising space unnecessarily announcing they were ‘Temporary Closed – no program today.’  
 
After one week following the outbreak, a survey showed that more than seventy persons had caught the disease with a third of them quarantined at home. During the next forty-eight hours, another ninety city people took ill, an additional seventy Indian Residential School inhabitants, and twenty more living at Brandon College succumbed to the malady. Mrs Alberta E. Olive was a newly appointed Staff member at Brandon College, and she died on the day she arrived from Calgary.  
 
Elation grew in Brandon with the news of the German Emperor’s abdication, and a spontaneous celebration was followed by an open-air thanksgiving service, but health authorities warned that those in quarantine could not break the ban under any circumstances.  
 
Source: Brandon a City by G. F. Barker.  
 
This was Winnipeg: http://thiswaswinnipeg.blogspot.com/2008/07/spanish-flus-toll.html