Open Secrets: Silence, Suppression, and Memory in the History of Canada's 1918-20 Influenza Pandemic.

For several decades, the 1918-20 global influenza outbreak has been called "the forgotten pandemic." Although recent scholarly and public interest in the pandemic has complicated the narrative of forgetting, the label has stuck. Highlighting historical evidence of influenza's long-term impact upon survivors, family, and community in Canada, the flu stories presented here, diverse in form and content, verify that a key question in pandemic influenza history is not whether the pandemic was forgotten or remembered, but by whom, and in what ways, it has been suppressed - or foregrounded. By moving beyond the classic epidemic plot line, with beginning, middle, and end, historians can find new methodologies and evidence with which to more fully understand the influenza pandemic's unfolding intersection with colonialism, war, social inequality, and labour struggles in the 20th century.

"Co-operation in All Human Endeavour": quarantine and immigrant disease vectors in the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic in Winnipeg.

Unlike occurrences of other contagious diseases such as cholera and smallpox, the 1918-19 influenza pandemic did not lead to anti-immigrant backlash, the stigmatization of newcomers as disease carriers, or aggressive quarantine measures focused against immigrant groups. During influenza outbreaks in several major Canadian cities, quarantine was either rejected or was a low-priority containment measure, reluctantly and sceptically employed. Blaming immigrants during the epidemic was not considered enlightened public health practice or good disease containment strategy. Retrospective evaluation of the successes and failures of the fight against influenza concluded that coercive measures such as quarantine did more harm than good. The experience with influenza contributed to new notions of immigrant inclusion in the social body.