Marius Barbeau was best known for his ethnological and anthropological work, having published extensively in both fields while at the National Museum of Canada from 1911 to 1949. The Rhodes scholar became a specialist in French Canadian folklore and music; in his anthropological work on Pacific Coast aboriginal peoples, he focused on the peopling of the Americas, in particular promoting the theory of migration from Siberia across the Bering Strait. He was founding secretary of the Canadian Historical Association in 1922 and a founding board member of the Canadian Geographical Society in 1929. He became a Companion of the Order of Canada in 1967.