Full Description
At the end of World War I, after four years of unimaginable man-made destruction, a swiftly killing virus travelled the planet. Up to one hundred million people perished in the most lethal pandemic in recorded history, the so-called "Spanish" influenza. More than half those who died were young adults aged between twenty and forty. Nowhere on earth was the flu more deadly than in isolated settlements on the far northeastern coast of North America.
In We All Expected to Die: Spanish Influenza in Labrador, 1918-1919, Anne Budgell reconstructs the horrific impact of the pandemic in hard-hit Labrador locations, such as the Inuit villages of Okak and Hebron where the mortality rate was 71%. Using the recollections of survivors, diaries kept at the time, Hudson's Bay Company journals, newspaper reports, and government documents, this powerful and uncompromising book tells the story of how the flu travelled to Labrador and wreaked havoc there. It examines how people dealt with the emergency, when all were sick and few were well enough to care for others, and how authorities elsewhere refused to provide assistance. The story We All Expected to Die reveals is both devastating and haunting. It is a story of great loss, but also of human endurance, heroism, and survival.
Contents
Contents List of Maps viii
Acknowledgements ix Introduction 1
1. Labrador — Trackless, Unknown, and Wild 19
2. "Our People Are Dying Out" 46
3. The War and the Flu 82
4. The Centre of Infection 97
5. Sandwich Bay and Lake Melville, Autumn 1918 109
6. "Let 'em Die" 147
7. The North Coast, Autumn 1918 168
8. Hundreds Dead in Labrador, Spring 1919 210
9. "In Some Mysterious Manner" 237
10. Aftermath 262
Appendix A: "Let 'em Die" Again 285
Appendix B: The Lists of the Dead 288
Notes 306
Bibliography 357
Index 365
