John Telfer House - 159 Stanley Avenue

John Telfer House - 159 Stanley Avenue

© Michael Harrison 2011

John Telfer was born in Sommerville, Ontario in 1848.  He was educated in Collingwood and later moved to Ingersoll where he married his wife Ann Telfer in 1883.  They soon moved to Toronto and then to Mimico.

 The home was designed in the Second Empire style with an impressive mansard roof, it still has its original dichromatic slate roof design. It appears from the 1913 Goad's Fire Insurance Plan that the house was originally constructed of wood so a brick veneer must have been applied at a later date..

John Telfer House - Goad's Fire Insurance Plan 1913

courtesy Library and Archives Canada

The Telfers moved into the home and lived there for many years with their three children:  Ella (b. 1884); Frances (b. 1886) and Cyril (b. 1892).   John Telfer began working for the Northern Railway, and continued with the company after it was acquired by the Grand Trunk Railway in 1888.  He retired from the railway in 1912 after a career of 50 years.  He then began his second career in municipal government as the Mimico Town Clerk and Treasurer.  He held that post until ill health forced him to lessen his work load and became the assistant treasurer in 1922.  He died at work in the Mimico Town Hall on December 15, 1925.

Photo of John Alfred Telfer
courtesy of The Story of Mimico, by Edwin Eland, 1935

His widow continued to live in the house until her subsequent death.  It was then that Cyril Telfer their son sold the home to my grandparents Lloyd and Kathleen Sauve in 1942 for the grand sum of $3,700.  

My grandparents lived in the house, raising a large family of eleven children, until their deaths in 1982 after which the home was sold.