When Barney “Jim” Barton was born on October 17, 1918 in Hastings, England, the First World War was ending. His father Amos Edgar Barton had left his wife Ella Matilda and son Edgar Phillip to fight with the Royal Horse and Field Artillery, occasionally returning to his family when he was given leave. Brother Edgar was five years older than Jim. Amos was a railway motorman and had a brother who owned a farm near Toronto. In October 1920 the Bartons arrived in Canada to work on his farm.

 

Soon they moved to Toronto and in the early 1920s they lived at 10 Wiley Avenue near Sammon and Donlands Avenues. By 1930 they were living at 181 Gledhill Avenue. Young Edgar was working as a messenger while Amos found work as a mechanic at the CN yards near Main and Danforth. A couple of years later, the family moved into 209 Oak Park Avenue, which until 1935 was named Meagher Avenue. Jim would have attended Danforth Park from at least 1930 until 1932 or 1933, then he attended Danforth Tech and specialized in Auto Mechanics. He liked woodworking, fishing and hiking and he played 2nd base on baseball teams.

 

Jim left school in 1935 and found a job as an auto wheel aligner at Bear Equipment Services which was located on Gerrard Street near Bay. He spent three years at Danforth's night school for Advanced Motor Mechanics and got his licence. By the early 1940s he was earning $27.50 a week.

 

He met Mary Bernardine Whelan, a girl from Hastings, Ontario and married her on July 21, 1941. He converted to Catholicism for her and they moved into a flat in a house at 825 Woodbine Avenue. It was on the corner of Woodbine and Oakcrest and was demolished with a strip of houses in the 1950s for the construction of the railway underpass.

 

When the newlyweds' honeymoon was over, Jim enlisted in the army. The previous October Jim had taken a month long military training course and he knew that his mechanics skills would be an asset in the army. By the end of September he was posted to the Perth Regiment and shipped out of Halifax on October 5, arriving in Liverpool on the 19th. He trained at the huge Aldershot army base and took mechanics courses on British army vehicles.

 

In early 1943 Jim joined the Royal Canadian Ordnance Corps, the unit which was in charge of supplies for the army, including maintenance and repair of equipment. Jim repaired vehicles and was also given a promotion to corporal. Something happened in March and he was demoted back to private and spent several days in hospital. In a few weeks he was promoted back to corporal. More courses followed in waterproofing and fuel injection and he received another promotion in May 1944 to Sergeant and soon transferred to the Royal Canadian Electrical and Mechanical Engineers (RCEME). It was a relatively new unit, combined from the Royal Canadian Engineers, the Royal Canadian Army Service Corps and the Royal Canadian Ordnance Corps. The mechanics either worked in workshops or were deployed to the front lines to maintain and repair equipment, usually embedded in combat units.

 

June 6, 1944 was D-Day and the massive invasion of France took place. Jim arrived in France on August 4. His movements aren't clearly indicated until after the war ended in May 1945. He was sent to a workshop in the Netherlands on May 24.

 

Jim was driving a jeep near Arnhem on June 17, 1945 when he ran over a land mine at the side of the road. He was killed instantly. He is buried in the Groesbeek Canadian War Cemetery.