W. George Farley
Toronto Daily Star, November 2 1929
I looked up W. George Farley in the Toronto city directories. He was easy to find: the 1929 directory had a bold-face entry for him. He was listed as the chief assessor of the Assessment Department at City Hall, with his address as 144 Macpherson Avenue.
I checked after that at five-year intervals and discovered that Mr. Farley stayed on the job for some time. The 1934 directory lists him as the Assessment Commissioner at City Hall and living at 390 St. Clements Avenue. (This, by the way, suggests that the photo caption above was in error: he was always an assessment commissioner, not an "assistant commissioner".) He continued to move around: in 1939, he was at apartment 3, 125 Rosemount Avenue, and in 1944 he was at 164 Chaplin Crescent, which turned out to be his final home.
He remained on the job as late as 1947: that year's directory still lists him with a bold-face entry as the Assessment Commissioner at City Hall. He would have turned 74 that year. By 1949, he was finally retired: he has no listed occupation in that year's directory and he is no longer in bold-face. The last directory he appears in is 1951; the 1952 directory lists his widow, Amy.
I did a Google search for W. George Farley and turned up nothing on the man in this photo. But I did find a 1938 file photo of the Los Angeles Police Department at the scene of a shootout with double murderer George Farley. Presumably, this was a different man.
Created October 7, 2025.