Call Number: Mss 156, Pc 181, Tc 114 (A.99-55, A.02-12, A.04-35, A.05-44)

Title: Marie Barton fonds.

Dates: 1897–2002; predominant 1970s and 1980s.

Extent: 3.9 m of textual records and other material.

Biographical sketch: Marie Barton (née Rossander) was born in Hundtofte, Denmark on April 21, 1905, the daughter of Karl Peder and Karen Marie Rossander. In 1911, the family immigrated to Canada where they raised eight children on a homestead near Kerrobert, Saskatchewan. At the age of eighteen, Marie started her teaching career and met Leonard Barton at a school dance. They were married in 1928 at the school's Christmas concert. Overcoming the barriers that existed for married women, she taught for four years so that she could help buy a farm in Davidson, Saskatchewan. The prairie drought of the 1930s drove them from their Davidson farm to a farm at Togo, Saskatchewan and then to Camperville, Manitoba. In the late 1930s Leonard was diagnosed with cancer and passed away in 1943, leaving Marie to return to teaching to support their four children, Arthur, Joy and twins Lois and Ray. She continued to upgrade her teaching skills through correspondence and summer schools, and in 1955 graduated from the University of Manitoba with a B.A. and a B.Ed. Marie taught for twenty-three years in Manitoba, first in country schools in the Dauphin area and then in Winnipeg where she managed a pilot program for visually impaired junior high school students until her retirement in 1970. After her retirement Marie devoted much of her time to writing and published many articles in newspapers and magazines. She also organized a senior citizen's writing group and endorsed the on-going Marie Barton Award for Excellence in Short Fiction presented by the Canadian Author's Association (Manitoba Branch). In 1996, she completed an autobiography, In Search of Baked Pigeons, which chronicled her varied life experiences from driving oxen at age six to learning to use a computer at age eighty. Marie Barton passed away on October 13, 1999 at the age of ninety-four.

Scope and content: The fonds consists of correspondence, newspaper clippings, personal journals, education material, teaching material including visually impaired material, drafts of articles and manuscripts, published articles, photographs, ephemera, unpublished fiction and non-fiction including plays, book reviews, poetry, material regarding the senior citizen's writing group, Terry King, Foster Parent's Plan, the Assiniboine Slopes Ecological Reserve, and patient rights. Included are several copies of her published books and anthologies in which she was published. The fonds also consists of biographical information about Barton’s family members, correspondence from the family between 1951 and 1997, handwritten notes and excerpts from manuscripts, and reviews and correspondence regarding her book "A Slice of Life."

Custodial history: The majority of the fonds (A.99-55, A.04-35, A.05-44) was donated by Marie Barton's children to University of Manitoba Archives and Special Collections in 1999, 2004 and 2005. Betty L. Dyck donated accession A.02-12 to University of Manitoba Archives & Special Collections on behalf of Marie Barton in 2002.

Accruals: Further accruals are not expected.\

Finding aid: Printed finding aid available in Archives reading room and online finding aid available at link below:

MSS 156, PC 181, TC 114 (A.99-55, A.02-12, A.04-35).