Born in Woodville, Nova Scotia, the daughter of Harold Edwin, a rural family physician, and Ora Louise Killam, Barkhouse was educated in Woodville until transferring to King’s County Academy in Kentville to complete grade twelve. After receiving a Teacher's License from the Provincial Normal College in Truro in 1932, she began teaching in Sand Hill. In 1939, she began teaching in Liverpool, Nova Scotia where she met her future husband Milton Joseph Barkhouse, a teller with the Royal Bank of Canada. After marrying in 1942, they had two children, Murray Roy, and Janet Louise. Barkhouse and her husband lived in Halifax, Charlottetown and Montreal. After he died in 1968 she returned to Nova Scotia.

Barkhouse began writing in 1932 but didn't publish her first novel, George Dawson: The Little Giant, until 1974. She is best known for writing the novel Pit Pony, published in 1989, which was produced as a CBC Television film in 1997, and a Gemini Award-winning television series in 1999.

In 2007, she was awarded the Order of Nova Scotia. In 2008, she was made a Member of the Order of Canada for "her contributions to children’s literature and the Canadian literary community". She is an honorary life member of The Writers' Union of Canada and the The Writers' Federation of Nova Scotia.