Cattle

by Onoto Watanna

The first definitely diagnosed cases came in early summer, when the weather is raw and cold as it always is there. At that early season only two or three cases were discovered, but all the members of medical and nursing professions volunteered or were conscripted for service. By a curious negligence, no means of protection were taken for the vast country that surrounded the City of the Foothills on every side, and it was even said that many cases that the authorities failed to report had been sent off "to the country."

If the city authorities were indifferent to the fate of the country regions, on which, by the way Calgary was wholly dependent, there was one man at least who kept the welfare of his beloved country close to his heart. The erstwhile Scotch stable lad, who for many years had dedicated his thought, his labor and his heart to the farming and ranching people of Alberta, begrudged himself even a few hours sleep. Night and day, he "kept the road," keeping the keenest watch for the first outbreak of the epidemic, well knowing that plague respected neither person nor place, but leaped across the great cities even to the remotest places of the earth.

The warm summer brought an abatement of the menace, but when the first frost came in with the fall, the plague fell like a cloudburst upon the country.

Calgary, the city of sunlight and optimism, became a place of suffering and death. Scarcely a house but the dreaded visitor entered to take his tragic and inexplicable toll of the youngest and strongest there. People went about half-dazed, as if they were living in a nightmare. Hospitals, schools, churches, theaters, every available public building was turned into a house of refuge. No one was allowed on the street without a mask of white gauze fastened over nose and mouth.

The terrible crisis brought to light the extreme scarcity of nurses and doctors. Although an army of volunteer nurses were recruited by the city authorities, they were inadequate to the needs of all those stricken households, where one after another died for sheer lack of care and attention. The hospitals and all the emergency stations were filled to overflowing.

In spite of the almost superhuman expenditure of effort, the death lists grew from day to day. Crêpe hung from every second door in the city, and every day a ghastly procession of hearses, automobiles, and every vehicle that moved on wheels, passed through the streets laden with Calgary's dead.

All the surrounding towns had succumbed meanwhile, and the smaller the towns, the heavier was the mortality for lack of skilled doctors and nurses and fit accommodation for the patients.

Most desperate of all, however, was the plight of those who lived on farms and ranches and at camps beyond the reach of help. The state of things in the Indian Reserves was appalling. The Indians were dying like flies, their misery forgotten by their white protectors. In their ignorance and helplessness, they sought help at the farms and ranches, only to be turned away, and often they carried the plague into places which had been immune until then.

Half the countryside was down with the disease, and still Dr. McDermott was vainly applying to the city and provincial authorities for help. Seeing that his demands were falling on deaf ears, he tried to impress into service men and women ranchers whose families had not yet been attacked, trying to make them understand that at such a time it was everybody's duty to do what he could. But the fear that had paralyzed the cities had now reached the farmers, and the doctor's appeal brought little response. In their desire to escape, many families shut themselves up in their homes, discharged their help and hung signs on their gates: "Keep away!" They closed their doors in the faces of friends and strangers both, and only opened them when they in their turn were forced to cry for help. A few did respond, it is true, to the doctor's call for help, but nearly always were themselves overtaken before they had served very long, and the demand for help of any kind was so overwhelming that it was well-nigh impossible to do more than show the sick how to take care of themselves.