01-01 Memories

There are coronavirus lessons from history.
My grandfather came home from WW1 in 1917 with his lungs damaged from mustard gas. He had a range of other health problems from living in the trenches, which he called “filthy and disgusting”. He immediately booked into the Christie Street veterans’ hospital. He was under care most of his life.
I have seen a lot of WW1 movies, but my memory of WW1 that had the big impact was playing checkers with a young soldier in the bed next to my grandfather. He had no legs.
When the Spanish Flu hit Toronto in 1919, my mother and her sister were deadly sick, but recovered. The flu had already mutated twice. So, the big question with the Coronavirus is whether it will come back in a more deadly form.
Some Canadians were wearing masks, as in the Alberta photograph. But according to my mother, living in an ethnic area where few people spoke English, no one really understood what was happening and no one was wearing a mask. And, the Spanish Flu experience that stayed with her was the death of the mother of her best friend.
The event in our family’s history that had the biggest impact was the great depression. It was in the early 1930s. Father never forgot the humiliation of having to ask a neighbour for a dime to get to work. And mother never forgot men knocking on her door and asking for food. They were walking the residential streets because the “soup lines” were so long.
There was so much pain and suffering, and at the same time so many acts of kindness. You do not forget stuff when it’s personal. It changes you.
And during the years my father operated his own business, he was always waiting for the next depression. He kept savings in reserve because he did not want to lay anyone off if his business hit bad times. Bank loans? Forget about it.
And how about WW2, and the impact on people and societies. I remember lining up for a matinee with a can of bacon fat. It was used for explosions. And every Friday I bought a War Savings Stamp for 25 cents. Kids across the nation were part of the war effort.
Everyone was doing something. My father made officers’ uniforms. Mother led an exercise class for women replacing men on the farms. Our neighbour went door to door collecting scrap metal.
And in public school, the principal came to our class to tell us that one of our teachers had suffered a terrible loss. Her husband’s plane was shot down during a raid over Germany. She had a baby child. I remember crying.
Old folks have empathy. The sorrow and surprises associated with the current pandemic are not unlike sorrows they have experienced with other great tragedies. Our own son, at age 35, died of HIV-Aids.
The Coronavirus pandemic is a game changer, because so many people at home and around the world are being impacted personally and emotionally. There will be massive implications.