One of the most devastating pandemic’s the world has ever seen was the Spanish Flu in 1918, and both Newfoundland and Labrador were hit.
The illness struck down otherwise healthy young people in the prime of life claiming an estimated 20 to 40 million lives world wide in the matter of months.
The disease killed 600 people in Newfoundland and Labrador, spread through sailors arriving on board infected steamers.
The most devastating impact was on coastal Labrador. It first appeared in Cartwright when a mailboat with four infected crew members docked there in October of 1918. Meanwhile, the supply ship, the SS Harmony arrived in Hebron from St. John’s with one infected crew member on board.
The virus spread quickly through the Inuit community, killing 86 of its 100 residents. It then spread to Okak, where it nearly wiped out the entire population. By December only a handful of residents remained, the population having been cut from 263 to 204.
More than 30 per cent of the Inuit population in Labrador were killed in the pandemic.
Journalist and broadcaster Anne Budgell wrote “We All Expected to Die”, a book on the devastating impact of Spanish Influenza on Labrador.
Budgell says when the Harmony departed Okak November 8th, the devastation followed soon behind. The deaths began on November 13th, and by the time it was all over in early December nearly the entire community was wiped out.
Budgell says in 1918, there was no health care on the coast of Labrador.
That, coupled with the relative isolation of the north coast of Labrador, meant that people had no exposure to the usual illnesses in circulation in other parts of the world.
She called the Inuit of Labrador a very vulnerable population at the time.
There were no nurses, no doctors, and no hospitals.