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Harley Walker was born in Milton, Nova Scotia in 1919, the son of  John and Pearl (Huskins) Walker.

Prior to the World War I, his mother had been a school teacher near Winnipeg in the Canadian West. Upon returning to her birth place in Milton, she married John Walker, who, with his brother R.C., operated a wood working factory.  They had two children - Dorothy and Harley.

Harley attended Milton schools with grade 11 in 1935. He worked as a labourer and truck driver for Walker Bros for a year before he went to college at Acadia. He received his certificate in Engineering dated 1941, before next attending the Nova Scotia Technical College, graduating in 1943 with a Mechanical Engineering degree. It being wartime, all students were enrolled in the army reserve. Harley upon graduation went off to Three Rivers PQ for his officers training.  E.M.E. training followed at Barriefield, and then he went to Europe as an officer in the RCEME, providing workshop and equipment repairs in the war zone.

Harley had married Dorothy Palmeter of Kentville in 1943, and their first of four children was born while he was overseas. Three more children followed upon return to Canada.

He was discharged from the army in 1946. He worked as a machine designer at Thompson Brothers in Liverpool, on a new venture there of Dragger equipment for deep sea fishing. He accepted an offer to move to Ontario where he was employed as a machine designer for Waterous Ltd. in Brantford. There the design work was on pulp and paper machinery, general machinery and steam boilers. His last several years with this company, which had been purchased by Koehring, of Milwaukee, was as sales manager of the boiler division. Inside information had been this division would be shut down, two years later.

Business problems at home caused him to return to Milton to work in his mother's grocery store. He moved his family to Milton, built a new home and assisted with the grocery store. Upon the death of his parents he joined the Engineering Department at the Bowater paper mill in Brooklyn, Nova Scotia. Ten years later he was appointed Chief Engineer of this department.

The history of the old Liverpool Township and Queens County has been a lasting interest of Harley's since working with Francis Tupper many years ago. His engineering studies had included land surveying, and many hours were spent in the woods helping Tupper, the then local land surveyor. Francis Tupper had devoted a great amount of time researching early history of this town and county. He often wrote to newspapers and magazines, and was often consulted by other historians such as Janet Mullins and Thomas H. Raddall. Much of Tupper's research ended up in the Public Archives of Nova Scotia.

An early hobby of Harley 's was searching out old photographs and snapshots of people and geographic structures. He developed his own method of transferring these to 35 mm slides, and assembled them into shows that were popular with fellow history buffs. Many of these slides will eventually be computer catalogued for display again. The origin of older homes and buildings has been another great interest of Harley's, and he has spent numerous hours researching the builders and the many past owners.  He has written a book about Milton houses titled "Some Old Milton Houses" which was published by the Queens County Museum.

Harley is a past president of the Queens County Historical Society, and has been a supporter of the Queens County Museum since its construction.