William Topley

Background

William James Topley was born in 1845 in Montreal, and raised in Aylmer, a town just outside Ottawa in modern-day Quebec.

Career

A large number of photographs by Topley are now in the collection of Library and Archives Canada, including approximately 150,000 glass plates negatives and a set of 66 index albums covering the entire history of his Ottawa studios from 1868 until 1923. His first exposure to photography was from his mother who purchased a camera in Montreal in the late 1850s. In 1863, at the age of 18, Topley was listed as an itinerant photographer, but by 1864 he was working at apprentice wages for William Notman in Montreal.

In 1867, the year of Canada’s confederation, when Topley was only 22 years old, he was placed in charge of a new portrait studio opened by Notman (his first outside of Montreal) on Wellington Street in Ottawa in a new purpose-built structure across from the new Parliament buildings.

Topley clearly had very good business sense, becoming the “proprietor” of the Notman studio by 1872, and by 1875 opening a studio under his own name. King McCord Arnoldi (architect) designed the studio and residence on Metcalfe Street at Queen Street in 1875.

The studio attracted many political figures, including all the Prime Ministers from Sir John A. Macdonald to Mackenzie King. He catered to the well-to-do—as he himself said “If I can see beauty in the human face, and reproduce it, I can command three times the reward for my work than he who simply shoots a plate at his patron.

True, in a small city, such a course limits trade, but one-half of the business with three times the prices is much better for mind and body and pocketbook.”.

Connections

Partner:

William Notman