Flashbacks: Hamilton’s biggest superspreader event
The news these days is filled with stories about superspreader events in different cities - big crowds of people, too close together, not wearing masks.
But the worst case in Hamilton happened 102 years ago this week during another infectious disease crisis, the Spanish flu pandemic.
It was called Tank Day," a First World War Victory Bonds parade in downtown Hamilton. In a city that was very aware about the dangers of large gatherings, the event was horribly ill conceived.
More than 30,000 people packed Gore Park in the afternoon of Nov. 2, 1918 to watch an armoured vehicle called Britannia crush a railway boxcar.
The war effort fundraiser was vividly captured in an iconic bird's-eye photo that shows almost every square foot of the park and surrounding streets taken up with people trying to get a glimpse of the mighty tank.
Over the following days and weeks, cases and deaths soared and the city was forced to reimpose restrictions to try to contain the spread.
Now more than a century later, amid the coronavirus pandemic, the focus is again on Gore Park hosting a major military event - Remembrance Day, on the morning of Nov. 11.
Only this time, there won't be a big crowd because the city's annual downtown ceremony at the Cenotaph is going virtual, to be shown on Cable 14.
Remembrance Day is an important civic event and tradition but we don't want to turn it into Tank Day 2.0,'" says Brydie Huffman, who is in charge of veterans' commemorations for the city's Culture and Tourism Department.
We don't want to hold an event where we know people would feel like they have to come because it is something they have always done," she says. To ask them to come out to a public event would not be smart."
That's a far cry from November 1918, when the city's chief medical officer of health, Dr. James Roberts, butted heads with organizers of the fundraiser.
The Victory Bond folks wanted public gathering limitations to be lifted and pointed to declining case numbers in recent days.
Amid additional pressure from the province, Roberts reluctantly allowed the event to proceed with hopes that crowds would be limited, and people would act responsibly.
But it turned out to be many times worse than he feared.
The Hamilton Herald described it as the largest gathering seen here in years" and a great crush of humanity." It seemed like the only Hamiltonians who weren't there, a Nov. 4 article said, were those who, because of illness or old age, were unable to leave their homes."
McMaster University retired anthropology professor Ann Herring, who edited the 2006 book Anatomy of a Pandemic: The 1918 Influenza in Hamilton," says The Board of Health at the time believed it was a very bad idea. They knew from the beginning that the disease spread in crowded conditions. Newspapers had stories about how to make a mask. It was just part and parcel of what was going on. But they hosted the event anyway."
To make matters worse, people uncontrollably took to the streets again just over a week later, after the Nov. 11 armistice, to celebrate the end of the war.
To that, Roberts threw up his hands in frustration. A machine gun could not have dispersed those crowds," he said.
Amid spiking cases and deaths, tougher crowd control measures were ordered by Roberts.
Since people will not avoid gatherings without the ban being in effect then it seems that we must introduce it again," he said.
From October to December 1918, more than 500 people died of the Spanish flu in Hamilton with 9,000 people known to have contracted the virus. Those are especially dire numbers when you consider the population of the city was only 110,000, a fifth of what it is today.
Clearly, it was a horrible period for the spread of the virus and Tank Day did not help.
It's interesting to look at a historic postcard from that day, that can be found in the Hamilton Public Library's collection. It shows the Britannia tank lumbering down James Street, surrounded by a crowd of people not wearing masks.
At the bottom of the photo, someone hastily wrote the words: The tank that went over the top."
It certainly did that.
Remembrance Day 2020
- Hamilton's downtown Remembrance Day ceremony on Nov. 11 will be a virtual event and can be watched on Cable 14. The program will include a ceremony with pre-recorded interviews with veterans and military personnel serving overseas. Further details will be released closer to the date.
- The Lister Block will be decorated into a Hero Windows" display. A piper will perform military songs on James Street at various points during the day on Wednesday Nov. 4 to kick off Remembrance Week."
- Public Remembrance ceremonies in Waterdown, Dundas, Stoney Creek, Glanbrook, and Lynden have been cancelled. It's expected others in the area will follow suit.
- The annual Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum ceremony will not be open to the public but will be broadcast on CHCH.
Mark McNeil is a Hamilton-based freelance contributing columnist for The Spectator. Reach him via email: Markflashbacks@gmail.com