Taras Ferley
Canadian politician (1882–1947)
Taras Demeter Ferley (October 14, 1882—July 27, 1947) was a publisher and politician in Manitoba, Canada. He served in the Legislative Assembly of Manitoba from 1915 to 1920 as a supporter of the Liberal Party, the first Ukrainian Canadian to be elected to Manitoba's legislature.
Ferley was born in Austro-Hungarian-controlled Ukraine, and educated at the Kolomyja Gymnasium and Lemberg University. In Ukraine, he was a member of the Radical Party. He moved to San Francisco, California, US in 1903, and took part in a communal living experiment which ended in failure after a few months. He arrived in Canada in 1905 and worked as a publisher and real estate broker. He became the director of the Ukrainian Publishing Company of Canada, and taught at the Ruthenian Training School at Brandon from 1907 to 1910.
He first ran for the Manitoba legislature in the 1914 provincial election, contesting the constituency of Gimli as an Independent-Liberal. He lost, finishing third against Conservative Sveinn Thorvaldson and official Liberal candidate Einar Jonasson.
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.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 30, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7685524. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1882, 1947, 1915 and 1920.
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This entry incorporates text from “Taras Ferley” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.