Edward John Ardley was born in July 1857 in Essex, England.

He was an assistant curator at Redpath Museum, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec. He started as a janitor at the Peter Redpath Museum shortly after its opening in 1882. He took care of the collections and constructed the display stands and shelves. Three years later, Ardley began to clean, label and mount specimens due to the increasing size of the museum’s collections. He also learned to operate a lathe to slice sections of rocks and fossils. In 1894, he took charge of the museum specimens and earned the new title of "caretaker and museum assistant.” In 1911, he became a collector of fossils and rocks and a preparator of ethnological materials.

In 1886, he married Mary Anne O'Grady (1857–1888), and in 1888, he remarried Isabella Ross MacMillan (1851–1943). He died on January 11, 1922, in Montreal, Quebec.