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The ranks of Canada's survivors of the Spanish flu -- the deadliest known infectious disease outbreak in history -- are dwindling. And researchers are hoping to find the remaining few to prevent their stories from being lost in the sands of time.

A project being launched by the British Columbia Centre for Disease Control is aimed at recording for posterity -- and for learning purposes -- the remaining first-hand memories of what it was like living through the devastating disease outbreak.

"I think what we're looking for is really in terms of: How did this affect us? How did we cope? How did we pull through?" says Danuta Skowronski, an influenza expert who is heading the project.

"Our families, our friends, our communities -- how were individual lives affected?"

It is estimated the Spanish flu killed 50 million people worldwide over a roughly two-year period, more than in the First World War.

Subsequent horrific events are well recorded, becoming a part of the collective consciousness through books and movies. But astonishingly few accounts of the Spanish flu exist.

In fact, one of the rare histories of the 1918 pandemic, by author Alfred Crosby, is entitled America's Forgotten Pandemic.

"There's a real vacuum in terms of stories, fiction or even just narrative personal accounts from that pandemic," Dr. Skowronski says.

"The Holocaust -- how many films, books were written about that catastrophic event? And yet the 1918 pandemic, you could count probably on one hand the number of fictional or even non-fictional narrative stories about that pandemic."

Experts believe the dearth of historical material is the result of the collective psychological trauma experienced by survivors who watched an infectious disease cut a broad swath through communities. Especially difficult was the fact that the disease aimed its worst blow at the young and previously healthy; the death rate among people in their 20s and early 30s was highest of any age group.

"I really see it myself as a kind of collective post-traumatic stress, where it was just too overwhelming to [talk about]," Dr. Skowronski explains, adding she hopes the passage of time will make it easier for those who have memories to share them.

The project is targeting people who would have been 10 years old or older, to try to ensure they were old enough to absorb what was going on. Statistics Canada data -- from the 2001 census, the most recent available -- would suggest there may be in the order of 9,000 or so Canadians aged 98 and older across the country, including roughly 1,200 in British Columbia.

From conducting some preliminary interviews, Dr. Skowronski knows that seniors today who lived through that period and whose memories are intact have vivid recollections of the Spanish flu.

"Remember, there's been two subsequent pandemics since then that they also lived through and that we're asking them about," she said, referring to the far milder 1957 and 1968 pandemics.

"But those have barely made a blip in their memory. But the 1918 pandemic, even though it's much, much longer ago . . . that pandemic stands out in their minds. Far more. Far and away more than even the more recent pandemic."

The project is specifically targeting British Columbians, though the researchers would hope to hear from survivors from further afield as well, Dr. Skowronski said.

She believes that as well as safeguarding a piece of history, the project could help people contemplating future pandemics to understand how people cope when systems are overwhelmed and survival comes down to individuals helping individuals.

"I think it's really hard for people to appreciate -- and governments in particular -- to appreciate the potential enormity of a pandemic," she said.

"But the basic human capacity to cope, to draw on each other for support -- that hasn't really changed [since 1918]. And so we can really learn, I think, from people and what they have to describe about that."