Social worker, educator, community activist.
Born at Toronto, Ontario in 1932 to May Zwilla Wallis (1898-?) and Frederick Flint Bennett (1903-?), she travelled to Bolivia with her missionary parents when she was a few weeks old and spent her first few years living on the shore of Lake Titicaca. Returning to Canada in 1935, the family resettled in southern Ontario. She received a degree in Home Economics from the University of Guelph, and then went on to earn a Master of Social Work degree from the University of Toronto in 1959. She would later return to the University of Toronto in the 1970s to obtain a Doctorate in Education.
In 1962, with her husband William J. “Bill” Hutton (1929-2022), she moved to Winnipeg with two small children. When the children had both started school, she went to work first as a social worker with the Family Bureau, and was hired in 1967 as a Professor of Social Work at the University of Manitoba, where she taught until 1991. She capped off her career by spending three years as Head of the Social Work Department at the University of Botswana, in Africa, returning to Canada in 1994.
In 1980, the couple lost their daughter Jocelyn (1963-1980) to cancer. Following her death, she and her husband founded Jocelyn House, Western Canada’s first free-standing hospice, in their former home. In addition to being a memorial to their daughter, and an important service for the Winnipeg community, the creation of Jocelyn House illustrates the generosity and caring for others that distinguished Miriam during her lifetime.
In addition to family and work, church life was very important to her. Raised as a Baptist, she joined the Anglican church when she married and was active in church committees locally, as well as nationally, until her health began to decline. She was a long-time member at St. Matthew’s Anglican Church. She was also very artistic and spent much of her retirement sewing quilts and wall hangings that now adorn the homes of friends and family members.
She died at Winnipeg on 18 December 2009.
Obituary, Winnipeg Free Press, 19 December 2009.
Obituary [William J. Hutton], Winnipeg Free Press, 11 June 2022.
“Miriam Freda Hutton,” Bennett Family Tree, Ancestry.
This page was prepared by Lois Braun.
Page revised: 4 March 2025
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