The Archives of Joyce Barkhouse: A Guide
Collection Number: MS-2-646Fonds-level description created and electronic version prepared by Laurena Fredette, August 2006
Collection Level Description
Title: Joyce Barkhouse fonds
Dates: 1948-1998
Extent: 147 cm of textual records
Joyce Carmen Barkhouse (nee Killam) was born in the Annapolis Valley town of Woodville, Nova Scotia, on 3 May 1913. She was the middle of five children born to Harold Edwin, a rural family physician, and Ora Louise Killam. Barkhouse attended the small rural school in Woodville until grade eleven when she transferred to the King’s County Academy in Kentville to complete grade twelve. In 1932, Barkhouse earned her Teacher’s License from the Provincial Normal College in Truro and began teaching in Sand Hill, Nova Scotia. In 1939, Barkhouse began teaching in Liverpool where she met Milton Joseph Barkhouse, a teller with the Royal Bank of Canada. They married in 1942 and had two children, Murray Roy, and Janet Louise. Milton’s position with the Royal Bank took them from Liverpool to Halifax, Charlottetown, and eventually Montreal. Joyce Barkhouse returned to Nova Scotia in 1968 following her husband’s death.
Barkhouse’s career as a writer began in 1932, when she was nineteen, with the publication of a short story in the Baptist church paper The Northern Messenger. Her subsequent articles and short stories, primarily written for a younger audience, have appeared in a number of church papers, anthologies, textbooks, and periodicals, while her column “For Mothers and Others” appeared in newspapers throughout Nova Scotia from 1973-1976. In 1974, at the age of sixty-one, Barkhouse published her first novel George Dawson: The Little Giant. She has now published a total of eight books, including Pit Pony which was adapted for television in 1997, and Anna’s Pet, a children’s book co-authored with niece Margaret Atwood, which was adapted for a puppet play by Mermaid Theatre.
Barkhouse and her work have received provincial and national recognition. In 1993, the Joyce Barkhouse Writing for Children Award was established by the Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia (WFNS). She received the Ann Connor Brimer Award from the Nova Scotia Library Association in 1991; the Valuable Contribution to Children's Literature Award from the Nova Scotia Children's Literature Roundtable in 1990; the Marianna Dempster Memorial Award from the Canadian Authors Association in 1989; the Cultural Life Award for outstanding service to the cultural life of Nova Scotia in 1982; and First prize, Children's Fiction from WFNS in 1979.
Barkhouse continues to reside in Nova Scotia, dividing her time between Bridgewater and Harbourville.
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“Joyce Barkhouse.”
Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia. 2005. Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia. 16 June 2006 <http://www.writers.ns.ca/Writers/jbarkhouse.html>.
Lumley, Elizabeth, ed.Canadian Who’s Who. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006.
“Sable Island People: Joyce Barkhouse, Author.”
Sable Island Greenhorse Society . February 2004. Sable Island Greenhorse Society. 16 June 2006 <http://www.greenhorsesociety.com/People/sable_island_people.htm>.
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Materials donated by Joyce Barkhouse in three accessions; two in 1993 and one in 1999.
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This fonds consists of research notes; published and unpublished manuscripts; photocopies and clippings of published articles and short stories; fan mail; speeches; and correspondence. The material in the fonds was collected and created by Joyce Barkhouse throughout her writing career.
A detailed inventory is available onsite.
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[Identification of item], Joyce Barkhouse fonds, MS-2-646, Box [box number], Folder [folder number], Dalhousie University Archives and Special Collections, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.
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