He moved to San Francisco, California in 1903, and took part in a communal living experiment which ended in failure after a few months.
He became the director of the Ukrainian Publishing Company of Canada, and also taught at the Ruthenian Training School at Brandon for a period beginning in 1907 till 1910.
Ferley ran again as an Independent-Liberal in the 1915 provincial election, and became the constituency's de facto Liberal candidate after Jonasson withdrew from the race.
As the sole Ukrainian member of the legislature, Ferley protested against the federal government's treatment of Ukrainian-Canadians during World War I.
Unlike others in the Liberal Party, he also defended Manitoba's bilingual education system of state funding for Anglophone and Francophone schools.