Harley Parker was born in Fort William, Ontario in 1915. Having graduated from the Ontario college of Art in 1939 he went on to work as an artist and completed further studies under Josef Albers at Black Mountain College, Virginia, in 1936. From 1947 through 1957 he taught colour theory and design as well as watercolour at the Ontario College of Art, Toronto. He was Head of Design and Curator at the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, from 1957 through 1967 during which a sabbatical year was spent as Associate Professor at Fordham University sharing the chair of communications with Professor Marshall McLuhan.

In 1973 Harley Parker became the initial William A. Kern Institute Professor of Communications at the Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, New York. He returned to Canada in 1974 as Research Associate at the Centre for Culture and Technology, University of Toronto, engaged in researching relationships between the arts and sciences in the 20th century. He retired to British Columbia in 1976 to live and paint in the Kootenay Mountains. He participated in many solo and group exhibitions across Canada until his death in 1992.