As a child, I lived in Lachine, Quebec with my younger brother and our parents in what was once the country estate of the Dow Brewery family. It must have been a shock for neighbours when a large yellow quarantine sign was posted on our front door.
My father, who had been refused as a volunteer by the Canadian Army because of very poor eyesight and “flat feet” as he said, caught scarlet fever. In the early 1940s it was not treated with penicillin or any other antibiotic. He was despairingly sick and the Lachine Hospital would not take him. Mother put up a bed for our invalid in a spare room downstairs. We were confined to the upstairs.
Poor mum. She had been an artist, studying and working in Toronto with five of our famed “Group of Seven,” especially Arthur Lismer. She changed personas and clothes, aprons, gloves and home-made masks every time she ran upstairs with meals for us, or games for us to play, then changed again before running downstairs to help our father. Needless to say, she washed her hands a lot. My brother and I were upstairs for at least two weeks, trying to be good. The family was quarantined for what seemed like weeks. The milkman did not come, the ice cream truck went right past us and the company that delivered ice to those with ice boxes rather than refrigerators was nowhere to be seen. No-one offered to buy us groceries. I do not know how mum managed, except that we had a vegetable garden, wild strawberries, gooseberries and eventually plums and apples on the property, as well as a root cellar. Local neighbours continued to shun us when it was decreed that we were no longer contagious.
I remember that we had chickens in our barn and a fenced-in area for them in the daytime. They were Rhode Island Reds. The fence was to keep foxes out. We had fresh eggs and mum had preserved lots of cooked chicken in glass sealers. We were prepared. Dad eventually recovered. He had, however, not had the strength to shave and had grown quite a long beard. This he kept for several weeks. Why? He loved receiving bows wherever he went because most people thought he was a foreign diplomat.