Drawing on contemporaneous accounts of the First World War from Canada and the United States, freelance journalist Melina Druga offers readers an insightful exploration of early-20th-century attitudes toward the conflict, in A Tale of Two Nations: Canada, U.S. and WWI.

The war ended on November 11, 1918. By the time of the Allies’ armistice with Germany, Canada had been at war for more than four years, and the U.S. for nineteen months. All in all, World War I had lasted for 1,576 days. Civilians in both nations celebrated the close of hostilities abroad.

No one could have predicted that a bigger, deadlier shadow was just over the horizon. The Spanish influenza pandemic was brewing for months before the ceasefire. In the final months of 1918 alone, the illness would claim nearly 300,000 American lives. By the time the pandemic ended in 1920, Spanish flu had killed more people than the war itself.

This final volume in Druga’s history series finds both countries wrestling with whiplash. Thrown out of the frying pan of combat, Canadians and U.S. citizens alike fell directly into the fire of a global health crisis.

1918 is the fifth installment of the A Tale of Two Nations series.