HUMPHREYS, Barbara Alice (1919-2017), one of the first woman architects in the Ottawa region to maintain an architectural practise in the period from 1945 onward. Born in Kelliher, Saskatchewan on 8 October 1919, she attended the School of Architecture at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg and upon graduating in 1941 she was awarded the Gold Medal from the Royal Architectural Inst. of Canada as the best student in her courses. She trained with an architect at Fort William, Ont., and later with Defence Industries Ltd. In Montreal, and with Victory Aircraft Ltd. at Malton Airport in Toronto. In February 1945 she became the only woman architect employed by the Veteran's Land Act Planning Dept. in Ottawa, overseeing the designs for new housing units across Canada for Canadian war veterans. She studied at the New York School of Interior Decorating, and later became a member of the Ontario Association of Architects, and the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada. A lengthy article on her work for the V.L.A., together with her photographic portrait, was published in the Windsor Daily Star, 4 Feb. 1946, 5.
She then joined the Chief Architect's office of the federal Dept. of Public Works, and in 1953 took up residence in Manotick, Ont. in a house of her own design, and maintained a private architectural practise there, as well as in Ottawa and Kingston. It was in that town that her interest in early Canadian architecture flourished, and she rejoined the federal government, working as a consultant to the Historic Sites & Monuments Board, and was one of the founders of the important Canadian Inventory of Historic Building, a key resource now listing over 5,000 significant heritage properties across the country. After retiring in 1981, she continued to teach courses at Carleton University on the subject of Canadian historical architecture, and published several articles and essays on the architecture of the Rideau Canal area. She later died on 21 February 2017 (obituary and port., Ottawa Citizen, 25 February 2017, page C 10; obit. University of Manitoba Alumni Magazine, February 2020).
Publications :
Barbara Humphreys, “Architectural Heritage of the Rideau Corridor” in Parks Canada, Canadian Historic Sites - Occasional Papers in Archaeology & History, Vol. 10, 1974, illus.