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.

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.

By combining many separate photographs of individual participants within a single, large-scale frame, Topley captured the scale of the event along with the details of each person’s costume.

Over the span of his career, Topley photographed every prime minister of Canada from John A. Macdonald to William Lyon Mackenzie King.

Furthermore, his studio also attracted the wives and daughters of nobility, political and business figures including Princess Louise, Lady Aberdeen and Laura Borden.

[9] Topley admittedly catered to the well-to-do crowd, once writing that "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.

"[2][10] Nonetheless, Topley is also known for his photographs of immigrants arriving at Quebec City commissioned by the Department of the Interior in the early twentieth century.