[1] Ruttan served as a survey engineer to Sir Sandford Fleming.

[2] Of Ruttan's many engineering projects, the James Avenue Pumping Station (1906), was considered the most modern such institution in the world.

[3] A charter member of the Canadian Society for Civil Engineering, he served as president in 1910.

He was a descendant of United Empire Loyalists,[5] as was his wife, Andrina Barberie of Dalhousie, New Brunswick, whom he married in 1882.

They had nine children, of whom four sons and two daughters survived infancy[1] including Mary Louise Ruttan (b.