From what I've heard Canada was a leader in biological weapons research during WW2. My uncle worked at Connaught Labs which was suppose to be involved in that research. In 1942 while working at the lab he volunteered to be injected with various serums that were kept secret. He died suddenly that same year of something that took his life in 2 days. The death certificate says it was encephalomyelitis. He was buried in a sealed copper coffin never to be opened again. His brother and sister have always thought his death had something to do with what he was doing at Connaught Labs. I'd be interested to know what people here think about that. Or whether they think he probably just died from some bug that caused the encephalitis.
I have limited knowledge about this - everything I know comes from Donald Avery's The Science of War: Canadian Scientists and Allied Military Technology during the Second World War. Chapter 6, "Canadian Biological and Toxin Warfare Research: Development and Planning, 1939–1945," deals with this. There's only a handful of references to Connaught Labs throughout the entire book, essentially detailing how some of those involved in Canada's biological warfare research were originally employed there. However, Avery does point out that the cultivation and research into viral warfare that would have caused something like encephalitis took place at Grosse Île War Disease Control Station or maybe Alberta's Suffield Experimental Station, not Toronto where Connaught Labs is located.
Though I have no idea what was taking place at Connaught Labs during the war years. Maybe there was other testing, but if there was, it's not mentioned in Avery's account of it. I mean, Avery does mention that they were testing things like Rift Valley Fever and Yellow Fever, which (I googled this just now) could have caused a death from brain swelling. So.. there's that... But I am 99% sure none of these were ever tested on human subjects. It was apparently tested with antelopes and gophers and the like, definitely not humans.
Wait, he died a few days after the injection?
Or later that year suddenly got sick and died in two days?
Secondary question, does anyone know where Connaught Laboratries got it's name? I imagine it has something to do with Connaught in Ireland, but what exactly is the link?
It's really hard to say without any kind of symptoms. Since nobody else in the family died (as far as you've said,) it presumably wasn't anything contagious. Somebody might've mixed up their vials and given him a dose of something nastier than intended.
Dying THAT quickly, though, sounds more like something chemical rather than biological. The nastier sorts of plague will kill you in two weeks untreated...Even Ebola takes a week or two once it gets going most of the time. And in both of those cases you have some rather horrific symptoms which people would probably recall.
Death that rapid could come from something like acute radiation poisoning, but again, that has some pretty obvious symptoms.