. @ByJamesKeller and I did a story looking at the Globe's coverage of the 1918 Spanish flu and the similarities to today's pandemic.
Let me share in this thread some items that didn't make it into the article even though they are still noteworthy ... https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-mandatory-masks-shuttered-theatres-and-confusing-rules-the-1918/

Researchers now say the 1st wave hit in spring 1918 but raised few alarms because it wasn't very lethal yet. Still, with the benefit of hindsight, we found stories of military dying of the flu or its complication, pneumonia. The Spanish flu struck younger patients hardest.

The first outbreak in the civilian population came following a Catholic eucharistic congress in Victoriaville, Que. This Sept. 23, 1918, story from @LP_LaPresse says two teachers and a student died at Sacré-Coeur college, which had been in quarantine for 8 days.

Sept. 23 minus 8 days = Sept. 15, the end of the eucharistic congress, which drew thousands of faithful and held open-air mass at the college. The school also had many students from the U.S. where the pandemic began earlier. The ad here boasts of the American students' presence.

As lockdown measures kicked in, cities felt like ghost towns. I was struck by this passage in La Presse with its description of solitary lights.