While the response of Cana­di­an author­i­ties to Covid-19 has not been ide­al, it at least makes a bet­ter-than-aver­age grade, and the ini­tial slug­gish response is quick­ly giv­ing way to a sci­ence-based one. Test­ing lev­els are still woe­ful­ly inad­e­quate. I have to admit that even Ontar­i­o’s noto­ri­ous­ly slimy Con­ser­v­a­tive admin­is­tra­tion is show­ing com­pe­tence, and Pre­mier Doug Ford, a con­gen­i­tal fat­head, has been on his best behav­iour. The Prime Min­is­ter is in iso­la­tion because of his wife’s pos­i­tive test, and gives press con­fer­ences alone. Nine­ty per­cent of gov­ern­ment busi­ness is now being con­duct­ed by skype or oth­er vir­tu­al plat­forms. Here in Ontario, pub­lic gath­er­ings are sus­pend­ed, restau­rants are closed except for take-out, and deliv­ery car­ri­ers wear face-masks. Only super­mar­kets and phar­ma­cies remain open. The bor­der is now closed with the Unit­ed States, with var­i­ous eco­nom­ic and med­ical-based excep­tions. There was con­sid­er­able “pan­ic buy­ing” over the week­end, and you can’t find either eggs or toi­let paper for the moment, but even at the height of this pan­ic buy­ing peo­ple remained polite and well-behaved. Super­mar­kets are assur­ing that they will be restocked quick­ly, and prices will remain the same. As of this writ­ing, eight Cana­di­ans have died. The supe­ri­or­i­ty of a sin­gle-pay­er pub­lic health insur­ance sys­tem in such an emer­gency is self-evi­dent beyond the slight­est doubt.

In the U.S., var­i­ous state gov­ern­ments have been tak­ing up the slack of a pathet­i­cal­ly inept and cor­rupt White House, and Amer­i­ca must place it’s hopes in local infra­struc­tures. Notable is Wash­ing­ton State, which has been hard hit and requires dras­tic mea­sures. Wash­ing­ton has about twice as many cas­es as all of Cana­da and has had 52 fatal­i­ties. Wash­ing­ton’s Pub­lic Health author­i­ties are fac­ing a fierce foe. But to demon­strate that state’s cre­ative spir­it, the best online web­site for con­sol­i­dat­ing cur­rent world Covid-19 sta­tis­tics was built as ear­ly as last Decem­ber — by Avi Schiff­man, a sev­en­teen-year-old high school stu­dent in a Seat­tle suburb.

Amer­i­can State-lev­el author­i­ties have been respond­ing admirably, but to show you the dif­fer­ence between the two Fed­er­al admin­is­tra­tions, I sub­mit the fol­low­ing image from a White House press con­fer­ence tak­en a few hours ago:

The most basic pro­to­cols in an epi­dem­ic are being vis­i­bly vio­lat­ed by the Pres­i­dent, Vice Pres­i­dent and his staff. This is idio­cy, incom­pe­tence and cor­rup­tion in a nutshell.

By con­trast, this is a press con­fer­ence, for iden­ti­cal rea­sons, con­duct­ed at the same time by Finance Min­is­ter Bill Morneau and Bank of Cana­da Gov­er­nor Stephen Poloz fol­low­ing the Prime Min­is­ter’s solo address:

They are main­tain­ing the prop­er six-foot dis­tance, the few jour­nal­ists present are as well, and the bulk of ques­tions are being asked through the inter­net. This is fol­low­ing protocol. 

Cana­di­ans have had lit­tle expe­ri­ence with epi­demics since the polio out­breaks of the 1950s and the glob­al flu pan­dem­ic of 1918. The most seri­ous recent issue was the SARS event of 2003, which killed 44 Cana­di­ans and was large­ly con­fined to Toron­to. I was work­ing in a med­ical lab­o­ra­to­ry at that time, han­dling poten­tial­ly infec­tious mate­ri­als, so I was kept abreast of the issue and had to fol­low very tight pro­to­cols. To this day, I keep my own home well stocked with dis­pos­able gloves, swabs, clean­ing agents and large quan­ti­ties of hydro­gen per­ox­ide — so I did­n’t have to run out and buy any of these items. For that mat­ter, I am also stocked with enough house­hold sup­plies (such as bins of rice, dried beans and peas, flour, cous­cous, mil­let, as well as canned goods) to stay at home for months, if nec­es­sary. Toron­to hos­pi­tals were caught with their pants down dur­ing SARS, and I’m told that stan­dards are con­sid­er­ably bet­ter now. 

But if you go back in his­to­ry, you can learn what hav­ing to deal with the real hor­rors of epi­dem­ic dis­ease is like. I’m present­ly read­ing an amaz­ing book called The Many Voy­ages of Arthur Welling­ton Clah, by Peg­gy Brock. 

Arthur Welling­ton Clah was a Tsimshi­an man born in 1831 in a vil­lage in the Nass Riv­er val­ley of coastal British Colum­bia. At the age of 26, Clah [his hered­i­tary name was Sgała’axł Xsgi­igł] was taught to speak and write Eng­lish by William Dun­can, an Angli­can mis­sion­ary, and adopt­ed a per­son­al ver­sion of a Chris­t­ian reli­gious faith, giv­ing no alle­giance to either the Angli­can or Methodist sects that he was exposed to. Dur­ing his long life, he worked at a wide vari­ety of jobs, was often an ambi­tious entre­pre­neur, and trav­elled wide­ly in B.C., Alas­ka, the Yukon, and Wash­ing­ton State. 

With­in months of learn­ing to write, he began to keep a diary, and he main­tained this diary for the next fifty years. Over this half cen­tu­ry, he pro­duced over 650,000 words of hand-writ­ten entries, the equiv­a­lent of Tolkien’s com­bined Hob­bit, Lord of the Rings, and Sil­mar­il­lion. By 1890 it had evolved into a repos­i­to­ry of his per­son­al philo­soph­i­cal mus­ings and an ambi­tious attempt to write a his­to­ry of his peo­ple. Clah was proud of his work and want­ed to see it pub­lished for pos­ter­i­ty, but the man­u­script lan­guished for a cen­tu­ry in the stacks of the Well­come Library in Lon­don. It presents many dif­fi­cul­ties to researchers because Clah’s Eng­lish was very crude in the begin­ning, and was nev­er the lan­guage he thought in. It con­tains lit­tle punc­tu­a­tion, and because of its idiomat­ic speci­fici­ty can only be puz­zled out by some­one very famil­iar with the com­plex­i­ties of the Tsimshi­an, Nis­ga’a, Hai­da, Heilt­suk, Kwakwaka’wakw, and Tlin­git cul­tures of the region. Peg­gy Brock­’s book draws on the diary and explains its con­text in order to pro­duce a bal­anced biog­ra­phy of Clah. This is admirable and quite dif­fi­cult schol­ar­ly work, so I will not dimin­ish it with any kibitzing.

When Clah began this diary, there were but a hand­ful of Euro­peans in British Colum­bia, and the abo­rig­i­nal pop­u­la­tion count­ed hun­dreds of thou­sands. The Tsimshi­an and oth­er coastal peo­ple lived in sub­stan­tial towns of large wood­en build­ings dec­o­rat­ed with art that still daz­zles and amazes the world to this day. By the end of it, the Euro­pean and Asian pop­u­la­tions far out­num­bered them, and most of the 20 or so abo­rig­i­nal nations, who spoke dis­parate lan­guages and pur­sued wide­ly vary­ing lifestyles, had been mas­sive­ly dis­rupt­ed and dimin­ished by the effects of deal­ing with gold-rush­es, incom­ing set­tlers, the impo­si­tion of Colo­nial and then Cana­di­an gov­ern­ment, reli­gious con­ver­sions, the rise of forestry and fish can­ning, urban­ism, the sup­pres­sion of the Pot­latch, and most of all, infec­tious dis­ease. When he made his last entries as a some­what lone­ly and embit­tered man with fail­ing eye­sight, he described the streets of his native village:

I walk up Git­lax­dan­sk vil­lage. The place half emp­ty, use[d] to be big place. [F]irst time I take my wife in that tribe [,] good many peo­ple [:] strong tribe and rich peo­ple to all tribes on [N]ass riv­er [.] [N]ow tribe very poor. [P]eople very near all out. [G]o easy places the young people.

While the var­i­ous cul­tur­al and polit­i­cal shocks that abo­rig­i­nal soci­eties in the Pacif­ic North­west (on both sides of the Canadian/American bor­der) expe­ri­enced were seri­ous, noth­ing was as over­whelm­ing­ly destruc­tive as infec­tious dis­ease, par­tic­u­lar­ly small­pox. This began appear­ing as ear­ly as the 1790’s either intro­duced by the Span­ish ships that explored the coast, or more like­ly trav­el­ling up through the Basin & Range regions from the Span­ish set­tle­ments in New Mex­i­co, car­ried by the com­plex trade net­works of the Man­dan. But the real dev­as­ta­tion began in the 1820s, as Amer­i­can set­tlers along the Ore­gon Trail brought small­pox and measles. From then on, the death rate often exceed­ed 80% of the abo­rig­i­nal pop­u­la­tion in a sin­gle sea­son, and wave after wave of such pan­dem­ic slaugh­ter drift­ed north­ward into Clah’s home­land. Clah’s vil­lage expe­ri­enced a dis­as­trous small­pox epi­dem­ic when he was five years old.

Arthur Welling­ton Clah [Sgała’axł Xsgiigł]

Clah remem­bered the small­pox epi­dem­ic of 1836 and the many who died from the dis­ease. His account of the epi­dem­ic of 1862 is much more detailed. In that year, small­pox, which had been intro­duced to Vic­to­ria via a ship from San Fran­cis­co, quick­ly spread through the Tsimshi­an Reserve at Rocky Bay and then to oth­er camps. Tsimshi­an expelled from Vic­to­ria took the dis­ease north. Fright­ened peo­ple were giv­en a day’s warn­ing to vacate the reserve. They burned their hous­es and blan­kets before leav­ing, and a gun­boat in the bay ensured their depar­ture. Although doc­tors start­ed vac­ci­nat­ing peo­ple in Vic­to­ria, three hun­dred Tsimshi­an had con­tract­ed small­pox and twen­ty had died by late April. Doc­tors also went up the Coast to vac­ci­nate the Abo­rig­i­nal pop­u­la­tion, as did Dun­can, who was con­cerned the vac­ci­na­tions were not tak­ing. It is impos­si­ble from the data avail­able to deter­mine their effec­tive­ness. The epi­dem­ic ran its course by Decem­ber, when Clah wrote to Dun­can that there had been 301 deaths and 2,069 sur­vivors among the Fort Simp­son tribes. Pre­sum­ably, Clah had been vac­ci­nat­ed, for he did not get the dis­ease, even though he nursed rel­a­tives with small­pox. The Tsimshi­an also tried treat­ing them­selves with reme­dies such as “woomash” plant, which Clah went up the Nass Riv­er to col­lect in July.

This cat­a­stro­phe rup­tured the spir­i­tu­al cos­mos and social fab­ric of Tsimshi­an soci­ety. Drink­ing and vio­lence were two symp­toms; burn­ing reli­gious para­pher­na­lia and mak­ing sac­ri­fices for abso­lu­tion were oth­ers. Clah believed the Tsimshi­an had angered the Chris­t­ian God by lying, steal­ing, com­mit­ting mur­der, and engag­ing in drunk­en fight­ing. He prayed for God to for­give them and take away the sick­ness. This cri­sis no doubt pushed oth­ers towards Chris­tian­i­ty. Dun­can’s mis­sion cer­tain­ly benefited. 

Epi­dem­ic dis­ease was one of the chief moul­ders of Clah’s life and world­view. Of his dozen chil­dren only three sur­vived to adult­hood. Two sons lived only to the ages of twelve and thir­teen, both killed by measles. Two daugh­ters died in their mid-teens. His last son made it to the age of 23. Far from any fatal­is­tic Sto­icism, the diaries are filled with accounts of the emo­tion­al trau­ma caused by these deaths. But Clah’s res­olute devo­tion to telling his sto­ry is best shown in an entry made as his sight began to fail: “My eyes half blind. I see day like smoke. But I don’t stop writ­ing.”