Miss Margaret Robins Archives
of Women’s College Hospital

A Founder of Women’s College Hospital
1877 – 1966

Plaque location: 226 Carlton Street

Rowena Grace Douglas Hume was born in Galt, Ontario, the youngest of 12 children. She was a graduate of Galt Collegiate Institute, and University of Trinity College. She took post-graduate studies in England and the United States before returning to Canada to take a position at the Ontario Medical College for Women.

Her career was exceptional, having lectured in Pathology and Bacteriology, she was Assistant in Anatomy, Ontario Medical College for Women, from 1902 – 1906. In 1911 she became a founder of Women’s College Hospital, and its first Chief of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, a position she held for twenty years.

A pioneer of planned parenthood programs, she formed the Birth Control Clinic, the first in Canada, in Hamilton, Ontario. It opened March 3, 1932, and Doctor Rowena Hume was the first doctor in attendance.

She was also actively involved in Alcoholics Anonymous, the Salvation Army’s Harbour Light Centre, and the Fred Victor Mission. After retiring, she ran a private practice in Toronto.

Dr. Hume was in the habit of hiring the unemployed to do odd jobs around her home, and at the age of 89 she was attacked and murdered by a transient worker. Some reports of the event suggest that she died at the hand of a man at whose birth she had officiated 28 years earlier.