Cecil Alexander Cameron Rutherford, 1890-1957, photograph - 1916 London

Cecil Alexander Cameron Rutherford was born in Kemptville, Ontario on October 4th, 1890 and came west at the age of 5 in 1895 with his family, to what was then the County of Strathcona in the Northwest Territories, after his father, Alexander, made a preliminary trip a year earlier.

After primary school in Strathcona County he attended the same residential secondary school as his father, Woodstock College in Woodstock, Ontario (now part of McMaster University), graduating in the spring of 1908.

This was somewhat fortuituous timing as his father, the first premier of Alberta, had just managed to start the fledgling Unversity of Alberta and Cecil was accepted into the first class, starting on September 22nd 1908.

Just prior to leaving for combat in 1916, during World War One with the British Artillery, after 8 years at the University of Alberta, Cecil married Helen Reid Martin, born July 16th 1894 in North Dakota, on June 5th 1916 in Knox Church. Cecil was 26 and Helen 24. She was the youngest daughter of David Martin and Margaret McCradie whom had eight children and ran a farm in Strathcona. Helen lived with the Rutherford family in their recently completed house at 11153 Saskatchewan Drive, now known as Rutherford House, for the duration of the war, constantly writing letters to Cecil.

On April 5th 1919, after returning from service in the British artillery, commanding field gun crews, and taking several shrapnel hits, Cecil was “called to the Alberta Bar” at the age of 29. Cecil subsequently joined his father’s law practice, then known as Rutherford, Jamieson, Grant and Steer.

In later years Cecil and Helen lived slightly west of the University of Alberta in a district known as Windsor Park. Cecil continued practicing law, carrying on his father’s firm after Alexanders' death in 1941.