Dr Mary Rutnam - A Canadian Pioneer For Women In Sri Lanka
When Anne Ranasinghe asked Dr. Mary Rutnam at age 89 of the most exciting event in her life…Mary is reported to have said, “my coming to Ceylon of course.” She did a great deal for the women and children of Ceylon nearly a century ago and one wonders why she left home to do so.
For some Canadian women who may be familiar with The Parlour Rebellion, a book by Canadian author Isabelle Bassett, they will know about a period in Canadian, especially Toronto, social history when young women wanted to make a difference in society and change the old ways of doing things. Dr. Mary Rutnam was of that ilk.
Who is Dr. Mary Rutnam? The expert is Sri Lanka’s Secretary to the Social Scientists Association, Dr. Kumari Jayawardena, who wrote a book on the subject, “A Canadian Pioneer for Women’s Rights in Sri Lanka”. Others, such as E.C.B. Wijeyesinghe have also highlighted her importance to the country in “The Good at their Best”.
A google search will tell you that Dr. Mary Rutnam was a founder of the Lanka Mahila Samiti training program for rural women. She was featured by the Canadian High Commission as one of four Canadians who are strongly linked to Sri Lanka at the February 2010 Kandy exhibition Canadian booth. Of the 5 Asian winners of the first 1958 Magsaysay Foundation award she won for her social work and was the only woman.
She was more than a do-gooder and humanitarian, she was also a political activist. She was involved in the Women’s Political Union and the All Ceylon Women’s Conference. She wrote text books on health and hygiene; she visited schools teaching about reproductive systems and childbirth at a time when such subjects were taboo.
Mary Irwin was born in Elora, Ontario and spent her childhood in Kincardine. She lived from 1873-1962. She arrived in Sri Lanka in 1896 as a missionary doctor, was rejected by the missionaries because of her marriage to a Sri Lankan; worked for the Sri Lankan government, but was not made permanent because of her Canadian rather than British degree.
On arrival in Sri Lanka when the American Mission discovered she had married a Sri Lankan, she was asked to leave Sri Lanka. In defiance of missionary and colonial society, she stayed in Sri Lanka and left the missionaries.
The problems of industrialization in Canada in the late 19th century led to increased Christian participation in social reform. Women like Mary grew up making connections between poverty, alcoholism, women’s health, social problems and women’s suffrage.
Mary Rutnam studied at Women’s Medical College, attached to Trinity College, University of Toronto, becoming a medical doctor in 1896. She was attracted to global sisterhood and applied for a medical position in Sri Lanka through the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. While training in New York she met her future husband, Samuel Christmas Kanaga Rutnam (1869-1929), a Christian Tamil born on an island off Jaffna.
Mary Rutnam worked at the state-run Lady Havelock Hospital for Women in Colombo until she was denied a permanent position and went into private practice attracting women, especially Muslim and other women who preferred to be treated by a woman doctor. She learned to stay among native people, avoid the English colonial structure and be doggedly non denominational in terms of religious affiliation.
Inspired by the example of another Canadian woman doctor in India, Dr. Oliver, she became involved in social work in Sri Lanka and remained a good networker with other women in Sri Lanka, in Canada and in India. The Rutnam family travelled to Canada in 1907-8 and Mary learned about the Canadian government support for the Women’s Institute movement. The US activist, Ralph Nader, wrote in his book on “Canada firsts” that this movement was the largest organization of women in the world. It was established in 1897 at Stoney Creek, Ontario and went on to establish chapters in 50 countries with a focus on promoting knowledge of home economics, especially in rural communities.
Her husband died in 1929 after years of ill health and she became a female headed household with five children, four sons and a daughter.
She wrote books including A Health Manual for Schools and A Homecraft Manual for Ceylon. She became a vigorous campaigner for less alcohol and more milk consumption. She ventured out with her son Robin to do battle with the malaria epidemic that killed around 100,000 people in 1934-35 in Sri Lanka.
Family planning was important to her and in Canada progress was being made with the Planned Parenthood Association but trying something similar in Colombo was resisted. Sylvia Fernando of the Family Planning Association that eventually formed credited her with being “so far ahead in her thinking”. Eventually a Sri Lankan, Bradman Weerakoon, became associated with leadership in the field internationally.
Did Mary Rutnam stick to her knitting and only focus on health? By no means, she became an early advocate of the Women’s Franchise Union, the forerunner of the All Ceylon Women’s Conference formed in 1944. When the Donoughmore Commission arrived in Ceylon there was no organization of women with whom they could meet so she created the Ceylon Women’s Political Association.
These groups took women beyond their children, their homes to wider social concerns from female prisoners to adult education. She became the first female member of the Colombo Municipal Council in May 1937, the first time women were allowed to contest, in the ward of Bambalapitiya where she had lived for over 20 years. Yet it was in the area of rural women’s organization that she made her most lasting impact it can be argued.
In the late 1920s while visiting Canada, Mary Rutnam studied the Women’s Institutes and in 1931 at her urging the first local such institute was opened in Pannipitiya near Colombo. The movement reached out to the poorest women and cut across caste divisions with a focus on health, child care, first aid, home nursing, food preservation, agriculture, dairy farming, handicrafts and dancing and drama. Often Lanka Mahila Samiti became the centre of village social life and they grew to 150,000 members in 1959 during her lifetime becoming the largest women’s organization on the island.
Dr. Mary Rutnam is an inspiration to those who are dedicated to improving the well being of others and fearlessly doing so by reaching out to our common humanity.
Text: Ingrid Knutson
Ingrid Knutson is the wife of the Canadian High Commissioner. Prior to coming to Sri Lanka in October 2009 she worked for 27 years at the Canadian International Development Agency and most recently as Head of CIDA in Afghanistan. Her views are her own and do not necessarily represent Canadian government policy. This article forms part of a series of Sri Lankan Canadian partnership stories. She can be reached at ingridknutson@rocketmail.com with corrections and/or story ideas.