Born on 23rd September 1886 in Alnwick, William was one of the eleven children of Scottish born upholsterer John Farr who had moved to England in the late 1870s and married Mary Jane Oliver. John was the oldest sibling born in 1883, followed by Eliza, then William; his younger siblings were James, Mary, Walter, Annie, Oliver, Lizzie, Marion and then Edward born in 1901. All born in Alnwick, in 1891 the family were living in Bailliffgate Street before moving to Duke Street at the turn of the century.
March 1906 saw William, then a carpenter, arriving in Canada, with the intention of making for Toronto, but three months later he was crossing the border into the US, but then moved to live and work in Fort George, British Columbia.
On 2nd July 1915 William enlisted with the Canadian Engineers in Vancouver and became Sapper 500392 with the 6th Field Company. Posted to the 2nd Army Troops Company based in Ottawa November 1915 saw him arrive in Plymouth and a posting to the Engineers’ Training Depot at Shorncliffe, Kent, before being posted to France two months later.
His skills as a carpenter were always in demand and for two weeks in October 1916 he was attached to the Royal Flying Corps; in March 1918 he was attached to the Canadian Corps Signal School at Houdain to erect a new lecture theatre and the following month spent a week attached to 16 Squadron RAF.
March 1919 saw the 2nd Army Troops Company return to England prior to their return to Canada the following month where William Farr was demobilised from the army on 25th April. He returned to live in British Columbia and found work travelling around the province with the British Columbia Land Surveyors. Settling down to the life of a rancher William married Beatrice Ridsdale in Christ Church Cathedral, Victoria in June 1922 and they had a son, Richard.
William retired from work in 1957 and died in Shaughnessy Hospital, Vancouver on 23rd November 1967, two months after the death of his wife. He is buried in Capilano View Cemetery, West Vancouver, BC.
