Calvert Mitchell Carruthers was born at Point Edward, Ontario, on 27 July 1898, the third son of an engineer with the Canadian National Railway. The family came from Dumfries, Scotland. Carruthers was educated at schools in Sarnia, Ontario, and at Queen's University at Kingston. When he graduated MD CM in 1921, he came to England and obtained the FRCS in 1923. He worked at the London Hospital and Poplar Hospital for Accidents and at that time was influenced by Russell Howard, Robert Milne and Sir James Walton. On his return to Canada, he settled and practised in Sarnia, the town in which he was educated. Outside medicine his chief interest was in photography, though he was also a keen Rotarian. He was twice married: first in 1929 to Dorothy Scott of Detroit, Michigan, and they had one son who is a pathologist. His wife died in 1963 and in 1968 he married her sister Winifred. He died on 15 February 1977.