By: Chloe Fine
For the past few weeks Queen’s students have been settling into remote schooling as most campus activity remains shut down in an effort to lower the spread of Covid-19. Although this pandemic provides an extremely unique situation for both students and administration to grapple with, this upheaval of normal academic life may not be as unprecedented as it seems. Our generation of Queen’s students is not the only one to have experienced a large-scale disruption in our education as a result of a pandemic.
The last time Queen’s University was trying to cope with a global pandemic was in 1918 during the Spanish influenza outbreak. It was the fall of 1918 when the pandemic reached a head in Kingston, as the city was becoming the epicentre of Spanish flu and influenza related deaths within Canada. The impact of the Spanish flu on Kingston was partially due to Queen’s medical school’s relationships with the local hospitals. These connections allowed the hospitals to offer free medical care so that students could get a plethora hands on experience. As a result of this, Kingston was the largest medical centre between Toronto and Ottawa. Kingston was the main provider of medical services for an incredibly large area including many smaller communities in the surrounding regions. In addition, at the time, Kingston was also a base for a lot of military operations and had been throughout WW1. Much of the Spanish flu was contracted by soldiers who then spread it when returning home. Therefore, Kingston’s military presence combined with its role as a medical nucleus resulted in the city being subjected to a particularly brutal outbreak.
Kingston’s two hospitals were being used both by the military and many surrounding communities. As a product of this it was becoming horrifically overcrowded by 1917. In order to support the war effort and aid in alleviating the community strain on the hospitals. Queens University opened both Grant Hall and Kingston Hall to become the Queen’s military hospital. Once influenza came to Kingston and started to spread, Queen’s military hospital also became a treatment centre for those affected by it.
At the height of the pandemic all classes and campus activities at the university were shut down for several weeks to try and curb the spread of the virus. It was during this time that the city’s newspapers recorded students having similar worries to the ones being articulated by our own cohort of students. Many Queen’s students at the time were left with the choice of whether to return to their homes away from Kingston or stay and wait out the pandemic within their student accommodations. A large number of medical and nursing students did stay in Kingston, helping in hospitals and at centres in smaller areas. Fourth year medical students were given the ability to graduate early and skip their fifth year of study so they could be dispatched to surrounding communities. Although Queen’s University had shut down, the Queen’s community had not. Some students stayed in Kington. Many of them delivered messages, provided medical aid, volunteered in emergency hospitals and for their neighbours. They helped drive support cars and did what they could to relieve the strain of S.O.S (sisters of service) workers.
It was an exceptionally trying time that caused incredible pain and collective grief within families, friend groups, and communities everywhere. Amongst the tragedy of this time were examples of outreach, cooperation, and perseverance as is seen within our own pandemic. 100 years from now it will be interesting to know what Queen’s students learn about our time battling this current public health crisis, and from it, what they will take away.