From the Winter 2013 issue of Dalhousie magazine.

There was nothing medical missionary Dr. Jemima MacKenzie (MD 1904, LLD40) wouldnt do when it came to helping the poor and sick of India. She prevented an outbreak of cholera after inoculating people night and day. She learned how to do cataract surgery by correspondence. She adopted dozens of abandoned children.

And once, Dr. MacKenzie, the spinster daughter of a Pictou County farmer, detonated dynamite that she brought from home to blast a well and supply a rural community with safe drinking water.

Resourceful, determined, gutsy. These words seem like understatements when it comes to describing Jemima MacKenzie, who graduated from Dalhousie Medical School at the turn of the last century.

Her missionary zeal was ignited as a 10-year-old her head filled with stories of injustice and hardship in faraway India at Sunday School in Little Caribou River Church, Pictou County, N.S. She told us she heard about women and children dying unnecessarily because of lack of education and poor hygiene and because the women were too ashamed to be seen by male doctors, relates her daughter Sarina Bayer from her home in Mississauga, Ont. She told us that is when she made her vow. When she grew up, she would become a doctor. She would work to help the women in India.

In 1882, when young Mina, as she was called, made her resolution, there were a few things impeding her. First, she was female, and at the time, Dalhousie Medical School had yet to admit a woman for the study of medicine. Second, she was poor one of 14 children growing up on a farm in Pictou County. And third, as the youngest daughter, she was expected to care for her parents as they got older.

In the end, all three obstacles created detours for Mina, but they didnt deter her from her calling. When she died at the age of 84 in Pictou, she had spent more than three decades in India. For her selfless service, she earned Indias highest honour, the Kaisar-i-Hind Medal for Public Service from the Viceroy of India, and an honorary degree from Dalhousie.

Jemima (Mina) MacKenzie was born August 18, 1872, the youngest of Simon and Ann MacKenzies children. The large Scots Presbyterian family lived on a struggling farm in Waterside, Pictou County, not far from where the Wood Islands Ferry wharf is located today.

When Mina was in school, not yet having passed Grade 11, she was teaching more than 100 students and commuting among three schools in Pictou, Scotch Hill and Saltsprings. Her mother was ill at the time, so she returned home each weekend. Minas life remained like this until her brother Simon and sister-in-law Libby came to live on the home farm, allowing her to complete Grade 12. She was 26 years old.

Mina and her sister Molly, older than Mina by six years, entered Dalhousie Medical School in Halifax together. Before them, only a handful of women had been admitted to the school and most of those, like the MacKenzie sisters, went on to do missionary work.

Read more:
Building a better world: Dr. Mina’s legacy