Major Research Project

Supervisor: Delia Gavrus

Project Title: The Impact of Culture on Anti-Vaccinationist rhetoric in 19th and 20th Century Manitoba.

Description: My master’s research focuses on the history of anti-vaccination in Canada’s Western provinces. Little research has been done on this topic, especially in the Manitoba context in the mid-20th century. My research is thus filling a notable gap in our historical knowledge. I became interested in this topic in the spring of 2021, when I got a job as a Navigator at the COVID-19 Vaccination Supercentre in Winnipeg. While there I got to see firsthand various reactions to public health measures and vaccines. I first explored this topic in a paper I wrote for a seminar course during my undergraduate degree. There, I researched public reactions to vaccination in different historical periods and Geographic contexts. I demonstrated how reactions to vaccinations largely came from a cultural standpoint. For example, during the vampire craze of late nineteenth century England, which emerged in the wake of the publication and subsequent popularity of the novel, Dracula, anti-vaccinationist rhetoric often compared the needles of vaccination to the fangs of the vampire. (Durbach, 2005).

For my research project, I am exploring this topic in relation to Western Canada in the late nineteenth to mid-twentieth centuries. This research asks several questions. It asks ‘what were the cultural influences on Anti-Vaccinationist rhetoric in 20th Century Manitoba, how did these cultural influences change over time and what were the catalysts for this change?’ To better answer this question, I am exploring and comparing how opposition to vaccination was expressed by members of various cultural groups.