Making Troubling Problems Manageable

Nine years ago, Edmonton writer Colby Cosh was considering in the National Post the potential H5N1 flu epidemic: “One daily warned us on Wednesday that a flu pandemic could ‘thrust the planet into unprecedented social and economic chaos.’ But what, I ask you, was the Spanish flu if not a precedent?” He continued with the lessons he had acquired from an acquaintance with microfilm rolls of early 20th Century Canadian prairie newspapers he had poured through for other research. (link)

This week in Maclean’s, Cosh turns similar attention to recent bouts of freelance terrorism: “It has become a pastime of mine to pick major royal or ministerial figures from 19th-century continental Europe and look up the little-known assassination attempts against them.” (link)