Entrevistas

Influenced by its Loyalist, Protestant beginnings, the population of Ontario eagerly participated in the Great War of 1914-1918 (Middleton and Landon 1927). The prevailing sentiment in Ontario was that “its people had always been proud of their British loyalty, of their Imperial idealism, of their readiness to do great things if ever the time for action should come and the life of the Dominion, the honour of the race, the safety of the Mother-land, should be threatened” (Hopkins 1919:1). This meant that not only did large numbers of young men enlist in the armed forces, but those left at home volunteered their time, money, and limited resources to the war effort. Vast government spending on the war meant cut-backs in domestic provisions, but these were accepted without complaint from the people of Ontario, including the implementation of a war-tax to cover the government deficit in 1915 (Hopkins 1919).

Recognizing the unsuitability and general unavailability of housing in Ontario in 1918 and that this problem would increase greatly once the soldiers returned home, the government began a building project that would provide affordable homes to working people (Hopkins 1919:96-97), but conditions were difficult for many people in Ontario. There were constant food, power, and fuel shortages (Wilson 1977:lxii-lxiii) added to rampant inflation (MacDougall 1990). By the end of 1918, “business conditions were most unstable, . . . the cost of living had mounted to an unexampled height, and . . . the

technique of “making ends meet” had become involved and difficult for most classes of every community” (Middleton and Landon 1927:756). The Spanish influenza pandemic of 1918 came right at the end of the war, right after years of public shaming of men who had stayed behind, the constant stress of having loved ones in danger and dying, and the health tolls that these and the food and energy restrictions had on the people of Ontario. Resistance to infectious disease would have been lessened, since it is known that both poor nutrition and stress contribute to increasing the susceptibility to infectious disease (Singer and Baer 1995).

Additionally, the war had removed both money and people from Ontario. In May of 1918, the Canadian Medical Association Journal reported that “Toronto hospitals are undergoing a considerable financial strain owing to the conditions enforced by the war” (CMAJ 1918a:460). Then, in October, during the height of the influenza epidemic, it was reported that “voluntary enlistment of doctors has had the effect of leaving large sections of our population without the aid of a physician within reasonable distance” (CMAJ 1918b:932-3). This necessitated the use of volunteer nurses (the Sisters of Service) and the Victorian Order of Nurses (VON), who were recognized as providing valuable medical assistance during the epidemic (McCullough 1918). It also prompted many Ontarians to seek health care services from the ‘drugless practitioners’ such as osteopaths and chiropractors (Adams 2012).

By the time conscription was implemented on October 31st, 1917, Ontario had already contributed 191,632 out of the total 439,806 Canadian soldiers. By June 17th, 1918, Ontario had sent 232,191 of the total 538,283 Canadian enlistments (Hopkins 1919:15). Many volunteers had been rejected from serving based on physical defects in both this war as well as the prior Boer War from 1899-1902. These rejection rates were evidence to contemporary public health officials of the necessity of the elimination of maternal and child poverty (MacDougall 1990:174). By 1915, the high initial numbers of volunteers were beginning to wane. After running several recruitment drives, the medical standards to enlist were lessened. The minimum height dropped from 5 feet 3 inches to 5 feet 2 inches, and the minimum chest measurement dropped from 33 ½ inches to 32 ½ inches (Miller 2002:69-76). Still, the medical requirements were strict and men could be

rejected for poor eyesight, poor dentition, flat feet, or varicose veins. Even in 1915, “for every ten men who volunteered, three or four failed the medical exam, but it was not unusual for six or seven to be rejected” (Miller 2002: 79-80). Given the numbers that enlisted and the average number of rejections, Miller (2002:80), estimates that over 40% of the eligible men in Toronto had volunteered by 1915. By the end of 1915, the eyesight standards had also been relaxed (Miller 2002:85). In 1918, men who had been rejected, but were still capable, were put into a special non-combatant class, whereby they could still participate in the war in some manner (Dominion of Canada 1919). Although a reserve class of men under 19 were registered by the conscription act, the Class I men were those “who had attained the age of twenty years and were born not earlier than the year 1883, and were unmarried or were widowers without children” (Dominion of Canada 1919:42). Many men who appealed to the tribunals set up to evaluate claims of exemption were denied (Miller 2002). Exemptions were granted for conscientious objectors, those involved in agricultural production or other industries directly related to the war effort (Dominion of Canada 1919:152-153). The result of the enlistment of the young men who were at heightened risk during the pandemic is to change the composition of Ontario immediately prior to the influenza pandemic. For this reason (the unknown population at risk), it becomes difficult to calculate accurate mortality rates by age, since neither the censuses in 1911 or 1921 were representative of the Ontario at the end of four years of war (however, this is attempted in Chapter 4). Further, since enlistment criteria continued to loosen the medical and height restrictions, the result was that those men who were left behind (who had not been exempted on compassionate or needful grounds), were those whose health was insufficient to meet those criteria, or who had been wounded already in the war.4 By 1917, the Medical Officer of Health for Toronto stated that “in view of the alteration in the expectation of life of our population due to the removal, by enlistment of Toronto’s best risks, it will be difficult to make comparative mortality statements that are not misleading” (City of Toronto Archives Fonds 200, Series 365, File 20).

4

However, there is evidence of the first wave among Canadian soldiers in the spring of 1918 (Rewegan et al. 2015). This could have provided some immunity to those soldiers who were infected and were still in Canada in the fall of 1918.