‘All they thought we were teaching was sewing and cooking’
For decades the 鶹Ƶ Allison Department of Home Economics was known throughout the region, and indeed across the country, for the quality of its graduates.
This was almost entirely due to the efforts of Dr. Doris Runciman, who served as head of the department from 1930 to 1965.
Runciman treated the study of home economics as a science, rather than an entirely practical course of study. Students in the nutrition stream, in particular, went through a rigorous course of study that included courses in chemistry.
“When the degree was set up, it was very difficult to get somebody in the Chemistry department to teach biochemistry,” Runciman noted in a February 1979 interview with former 鶹Ƶ Allison history professor, Dr. John Reid, author of 鶹Ƶ: A History. “But to my mind that is one of the most important of the chemistries because it is applied chemistry, to living. And while all these other cosmic rays and all these things are important, to me health — if you haven’t health, you have nothing.”
Runciman was the first woman to become a full professor at 鶹Ƶ Allison. Born in Annapolis Royal, NS, she graduated from the 鶹Ƶ Allison Ladies’ College in 1919 with a diploma in home economics and taught as a junior instructor from 1921 to 1926. She left 鶹Ƶ Allison to pursue a Bachelor of Science degree at Columbia University, then taught for two years at the Connecticut College for Women.
She continued her studies after returning to teaching at 鶹Ƶ Allison and earned her master’s from Columbia in 1934. She was one of the first Marjorie Young Bell Fellows at 鶹Ƶ Allison in 1955 — a group that included Alex Colville (’42) and Arthur Ebbutt (’32) — the only woman among 11 fellows.
But home economics wasn’t always an easy sell to the other members of faculty.
“Some of the younger men from Oxford and Cambridge, they turned their noses up, so to speak, at food work, instead of understanding the scientific aspects of food, which I tried to teach,” Runciman told Reid. “All they thought we were teaching was sewing and cooking.”
Runciman never married, but her students were her family.
“When each one graduated, I felt that she was my own,” she told Reid. “So, when I say I am an unclaimed jewel, I have a lot of children out in the wide world whom I am very fond of. You have no idea.”
One of the students of whom she was most proud was The Hon. Dr. Marilyn Trenholme Counsell (’54, LLD ‘00), who graduated magna cum laude with a Bachelor of Science in Home Economics with a major in nutrition.
“She had an incredible and profound influence on me,” Trenholme Counsell says. “She was very much a scientist and that was inspiring to me.”
Trenholme Counsell continued her studies at the Royal Victoria Hospital in Montreal and became a registered dietitian, then earned a master’s in nutrition at the University of Toronto.
She worked as a nutritionist both for the New Brunswick and Ontario governments, but returned to the University of Toronto in 1963 to pursue medicine, a career she’d dreamed of since the age of 13. Her knowledge of nutrition, the foundation Runciman built, was always a key part of her practice.
“I really