(29 June 1883- 4 Jan. 1962), agricultural expert and federal deputy minister. (G.S.H. Barton, Horace Barton, Prof. Barton, Dr Barton) Born on Lot 16, Concession 5, West Hawkesbury Township, Prescott Co. Parents: John McCann Barton and his wife Margaret Ann Allen. He studied at Vankleek Collegiate Institute and Ontario Agricultural College (degree B.S.A.) and taught animal husbandry at Macdonald College where he had the rank of professor from 1911 and was dean of agriculture from 1925. He was deputy minister of agriculture for Canada 1932 to 1949, holding this important position during the Depression, the Second World War, and the critical years of the formation of Canada’s long-term post-war social policies. During all but the first years during which Barton, a “near Glengarrian” by right of his place of birth and upbringing, was deputy minister, J. G. Gardiner, of GC associations, was minister of agriculture (1935-1957). Meanwhile, appointed in the same year as Barton, the Glengarrian W.C. Clark was deputy minister of finance (1932-1952), while Mackenzie King, prime minister over many years, had his own GC associations. Barton was an influence on shaping the food and agriculture structures of the United Nations in 1945. His publications included a short history of Canadian agriculture in The Canada Year Book 1939, chapter VIII. He died at Ottawa, and is buried at Pinecrest Cemetery, Ottawa. He was married in 1912 to Mabel Pauline Loveridge of Rochester, N.Y. They had no children.
The many honours he received included a D.Sc.A. (Hon.) from Laval University, 1928. He was a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and the Barton Building at Macdonald College is named after him (also, there is a portrait of him in the building). The Cornwall Standard-Freeholder 5 June 1935 reported that four men from its district had been made companions of the Order of St. Michael and St. George, these being Barton, W. C. Clark, “Ralph Connor” (C. W. Gordon) and Merchant Michael Mahoney of the Canadian legation in Washington. Somewhat surprisingly, while Clark has been much noticed in the scholarly writings of recent years on the academic recruits of the Clark era to the higher ranks of Canadian government administration, Barton has passed almost unnoticed. Perhaps the blame must be shared by an erroneous belief that someone who taught agriculture could not “really” be an academic, much less an intellectual. A predecessor of Barton as Dominion deputy minister of agriculture, J.H. Grisdale, born in 1870 at Ste-Marthe, Que., was, like Barton, a student at Vankleek Hill, but seems to have had no GC connections.
Barton was well known in the GC area as a local son who had done outstandingly well in the great world outside, and he was sometimes a visitor back home in official capacities. While visiting GC when he was a teacher at Macdonald College, he bought five Ayrshires from the Watt family at Lancaster, GC, for the college farm, 1919. In 1938, he addressed the St. Andrew’s West Boys’ Barley Club at the Breadalbane, GC, home of John E. McIntosh, the well known writer “Sandy Fraser,” and also addressed the Stormont County Ayrshire Breeders at the counties farm, the Glen Stordun Farm. He spoke at the Maxville Fair in 1943 and opened the Vankleek Hill Fair in 1948.
Sketch of his life written by his sister Mrs Margaret E. Nixon published in newsletter of Glengarry Genealogical Society Oct.-Dec. 1977 * MDict * Who’s Who in Canada 1945-1946 * Who’s Who in the Agricultural Institute of Canada (1948): see Bibliography of Glengarry 37 for this series * CP news article on his life, Standard Freeholder 7 May 1942 * obituary of his mother, SFH 13 July 1943 * Sandy Fraser’s tribute, “One of My Neighbours,” Farmer's Advocate 14 Sept. 1939, to Tommy Barton, farmer and brother of the deputy minister; Tommy Barton’s obituary is in Vankleek Hill Review 1 Feb. 1978 * Austin F. Cross, Cross Roads (1936) 105 * report on G. S. H. Barton’s Toronto address on the cheese industry, SFH 24 Jan. 1947 * “visitor back home”: Glengarry News 17 Jan. 1919, SFH 15, 18, 29 July 1938, 14 & 18 Sept. 1943, 13 Sept. 1948 * retires from federal service, GN 11 Jan. 1952 * Grisdale: Who’s Who and Why 1921 p. 36