In 1918 the Moravian mission ship Harmony arrived on the Labrador coast. It carried the deadly influenza virus, which killed nearly 80 percent of the 236 Inuit living in Okak and soon swept through nearby communities. According to one observer: “When the Harmony left Okak, people were beginning to fall sick.… the dogs played havoc with the corpses. At Sillutalik 36 persons died, but only 18 remained to be buried. The only visible remains of the others were a few bare skulls and a few shankbones lying around in the houses.”

This report of the impact of the flu on the Inuit of Labrador describes what must have been a common experience in North America in the early years of European contact. Lacking immunity to the viruses carried by the newcomers, indigenous peoples often succumbed to common European diseases such as smallpox, measles, and influenza. Nor was the Labrador tragedy the only twentieth-century example of such an occurrence in Canada. According to Inuit tradition and DNA evidence, one small community of Tuniit survived the aggression of the Thule by taking refuge on Southampton Island in Hudson Bay. A Scottish whaling vessel brought disease to the island in 1902, wiping out the last survivors of a people who had lived in northern North America for five thousand years.