Community Effort

Due to limited medical resources and the highly contagious nature of the disease, it often fell on New Brunswickers to care for each other to ensure public safety. As historian Jane Jenkins articulates, the Spanish flu pandemic was “like nothing anyone alive at the time had ever experienced” (Jenkins, “Baptism of Fire,” 319). As such, the event sparked a great deal of fear and uncertainty in New Brunswickers. It proved crucial for community members to lean on one another. Support materialized in various forms; some prepared meals, others cut wood, while many lent comfort and goodwill. Countless individuals volunteered their time and efforts to intervene when entire families were struck ill.

The following records draws on first-hand accounts of volunteers and newspaper coverage of various public efforts to respond to the hardship. One notable entry is Christine Ryan Fewings’s memories of an orphaned child who lost both his parents from influenza. It begs us to consider not only how communities stepped up and cared for one another during the pandemic, but also its aftermath. In the words of Fewings, the Spanish influenza outbreak of 1918: “[was] indelibly stamped on my mind!” (MC3682: Eileen Pettigrew fonds, Box 5, File 1). After cases subsided, government restrictions lifted, and volunteer nurses returned home, the memory of the flu remained engrained in New Brunswick popular memory.

To read more examples of neighbourly compassion during the Spanish influenza, please consult Eileen Pettigrew’s The Silent Enemy: Canada and the Deadly Flu of 1918.