Covid-19 pandemic and remembering the Battle of Vimy Ridge 104 years later.

    Covid-19 pandemic
 and remembering the
Battle of Vimy Ridge
104 years later.

by Maj (ret'd) CORNELIU E. CHISU, CD, PMSC,
FEC, CET, P. Eng.
Former Member of Parliament Pickering-Scarborough East
     As the world continues to wage war on Covid-19 mutants' invisible tyrants, Canadians are being encouraged to remember the efforts of soldiers during those four bloody days between April 9 and 12, 1917 in France.
Even with the Covid-19 pandemic ravaging our nation it is important to remember that more than a century ago this nation really got created by the effort of all Canadians demonstrating patriotism and a high level of civic responsibility. Today we are asked to demonstrate the same patriotism and civic responsibility against the new enemy.
A couple of months after the critical battle at Vimy, another enemy, the Spanish flu, decimated the world, which also had drastic repercussions in Canada. And now the Covid-19 pandemic is testing the world once again.  Today we are facing a similar situation which requires that all Canadians unite to care for each other. We must rely on our own civic responsibility and sense of duty to win this battle against the coronavirus enemy.   Let us now go back in history to the days of Easter in 1917, which defined the birth of a proud and compassionate nation.
As dawn broke on that morning at Vimy, close to a hundred thousand Canadians poured from trenches, dugouts and tunnels, surged up a slope and conquered an enemy position considered impregnable by its German defenders and, frankly, by Canada's allies.
This was the first time all four divisions of the Canadian Forces fought as a unified unit. They planned and rehearsed, planned again, and they stockpiled vast amounts of ammunition. On Easter Monday (April 9), they launched the battle, and because they were so well prepared, the artillery barrage was said to be so enormous, you could hear the distant thunder of it as far away as London, England, a distance of more than 250 kilometres.
It was a costly victory. 3,600 Canadians making the ultimate sacrifice, and approximately 7,000 being wounded on the 9th: the worst day's losses for Canada in the war. Many historians and writers consider the Canadian victory at Vimy a defining moment for Canada, when the country emerged from under the shadow of Britain and felt capable of greatness. Canadians had done a remarkable thing and, with French and English, First Nations and recent immigrants, they had done it together.
Vimy was followed by other Canadian victories, some of them even greater feats of arms. Sir Arthur Currie, Canadian Corps commander after Sir Julian Byng, the victor at Vimy, was promoted, boasted that he had won an even better victory at Lens when he persuaded his British commander-in-chief to let the Canadians capture Hill 70, forcing the Germans to counter-attack at enormous cost in German soldiers' lives.
Currie's arguments for smarter tactics carried weight chiefly because of Canadian success at Vimy. The Vimy experience provided a pattern for future successes. The Canadians had rehearsed tirelessly before the battle. They dug trenches and tunnels and piled tons of ammunition for the heavy guns that pulverized German trenches and wiped out most of the German artillery hidden behind Vimy Ridge.
The motto for Canadian success was "thorough". Nothing that could help soldiers succeed would be ignored. Digging trenches and tunnels and lugging artillery shells through miles of wet, muddy trenches was brutally exhausting work.
The Vimy victory shaped a Canadian way of making war. Other nations might celebrate flamboyant valour or dogged sacrifice; Canadians built on the conviction that only thorough preparation could spell success. At Hill 70, at Amiens, in crossing the Canal du Nord and even by capturing Passchendaele in October 1917, Canadians could take pride in their "ever-victorious" Canadian Corps.
Then came the Spanish flu.  Also known as the 1918 flu pandemic, it was an unusually deadly influenza pandemic. The virulent Spanish flu, a devastating and previously unknown form of influenza, struck Canada hard between 1918 and 1920. And after a century here we are again hit hard by the Covid-19 pandemic which started in 2020 and has already claimed many victims worldwide, 23,172 Canadian victims as of today, and continues to rage dangerously on its third wave.   The international Spanish flu pandemic killed approximately 55,000 people in Canada, most of whom were young adults between the ages of 20 and 40. These deaths compounded the impact of the more than 60,000 Canadians killed in service during the First World War (1914-18).
Inadequate quarantine measures, powerlessness against the illness, and a lack of coordinated efforts from health authorities led to insurmountable chaos. Countless nurses, volunteers, and members of charitable organizations risked their lives to ensure that a large number of the ill and their families survived. Sound familiar?
With no vaccine or effective treatment, this devastating pandemic affected every inhabited region in the world, including Canada. It came in multiple waves.
The first wave took place in the spring of 1918, then in the fall of 1918, a mutation of the influenza virus produced an extremely contagious, virulent, and deadly form of the disease. This second wave caused 90% of the deaths that occurred during the pandemic. Have we learned anything?   Subsequent waves took place in the spring of 1919 and the spring of 1920. The total number of deaths, estimated at between 50 and 100 million, claimed the lives of somewhere between 2.5 and 5% of the global population. Most of the victims were in the prime of their lives.  Can we learn something from history?
In Canada, the disease arrived at the port cities of Québec City, Montréal, and Halifax, then spread westward across the country. The intensification of the war effort in the final year of the war was instrumental in the transmission of the disease, as troops travelling from east to west by train, mobilized to participate in the war in Siberia, brought the virus westward with them.
Municipal and provincial authorities tried to save lives by prohibiting public gatherings and by isolating the sick, but these provisions had little effect. As the rates of infection grew, the number of healthy workers declined. Does this sound familiar?  Did lockdowns work then?  Why should they work better now?
Before long, the Canadian economy was paralyzed. Health care professionals were perhaps the hardest hit. Ultimately, it was volunteers, nurses, paramedics, and members of religious communities who, risking their own lives, visited those who were ill and their families to deliver modest health care and the supplies needed to survive.  Does anyone remember them today?
Criticized for failing to provide resources and coordination to public health authorities across the country, the federal government responded to the crisis by founding the Department of Health in 1919. Do you think, maybe the time has come to revamp our health protection system?
So it is time for reflection, learning from our own history and acting accordingly. Let's not forget!
Are our leaders leading or hiding? Lest we forget…