Book excerpt: Health crises such as the SARS epidemic and H1N1 have rekindled interest in the 1918 influenza pandemic, which swept the globe after the First World War and killed approximately fifty million people. Epidemic Encounters examines the pandemic in Canada, where one-third of the population took ill and fifty-five thousand people died. What role did social inequalities play in determining who survived? How did the authorities, health care workers, and ordinary citizens respond? Contributors answer these questions as they pertained to both local and national contexts. In the process, they offer new insights into medical history’s usefulness in the struggle against epidemic disease.