Poster issued by the Provincial Board of Health about the influenza epidemic, Alberta. Glenbow Archives, NA-4548-5.
Note from Andrea: Check out this awesome resource guide we created in collaboration with Sean Carleton, Carolyn Podruchny, and Active History!
By Sean Carleton, Andrea Eidinger, Carolyn Podruchny.
We are living in unprecedented times, or so we are being told by many commentators, health experts, and politicians these days.
Just last week, Dictionary.com released a list of “The Best Words to Use During Unprecedented Times” to help people describe their experiences during the COVID-19 crisis. The first word was “unprecedented.” The website explained, “If you’ve been keeping up with the news, you’ll have seen this word used quite a lot. Instead of defaulting to “I’ve never seen anything like this before,’ say ‘This is completely unprecedented.’”
Though the world has never seen a coronavirus pandemic quite like we are currently witnessing, that does not mean that what we are experiencing is “completely unprecedented.”