William James Topley (13 February 1845 – 16 November 1930) was a Canadian photographer based in Ottawa, Ontario. He was the best known of Ottawa’s nineteenth-century photographers and the most socially prominent one. Topley was noted for his portraiture of Canadian politicians and was a business partner of William Notman, having taken over Notman's Ottawa studio in 1872. 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. Early life William James Topley was born in 1845 in Montreal, Canada East to John Topley, a saddler and harness maker, and Anna Delia Harrison. He was raised in Aylmer, a town outside of Ottawa in the modern-day province of Quebec. His first exposure to photography was from his mother, who had purchased a camera in Montreal in the late 1850s and brought it back with her to Aylmer. By 1863, Topley was working in Upper Canada as an itinerant photographer specializing in tintypes. That same year, he moved to Montreal with his family following the death of his father. Career In 1864, Topley was employed as an apprentice to William Notman in Montreal. In 1868, the year following Canadian Confederation, Topley was placed in charge of a new portrait studio opened by Notman (his first outside of Montreal) on Wellington Street in Ottawa. The studio occupied a purpose-built structure across from the new Parliament buildings, and would specialize in portrait photography. Topley became the proprietor of this studio in 1872, which attracted over 2,300 sitters each year. By 1875, Topley had ended his business relationship with Notman and opened a studio of his own in Ottawa at the corner of Metcalfe Street and Queen Street. This studio was designed by the architect King McCord Arnoldi in the Italianate style and also served as a residence for Topley, however financial difficulties would see his studio moved to several locations throughout Ottawa until 1888 when it was permanently established at 132 Sparks Street. An innovation that Topley learned from William Notman was the composite photograph. In 1876, Topley created one to commemorate the costume ball thrown by Governor General Lord Dufferin and his wife in February of that year—the first of several such balls thrown over the next two decades. By