Ernest F. Keir (1878 - 1941)

Ernest F. Kier was born in Wisconsin. He was a photographer who used a 6.5 x 8.5 full-plate camera. He began taking photographs in March 1898 when he and his brother, Lewis, set off to the Yukon. Ernest was an amateur photographer who managed to make his hobby pay when he reached the Klondike. Keir produced photographs that he sold through Cribb & Rogers Drug Store. He took photographs from February through July 1899 and lived on the sale of these photographs. He ran out of supplies but received more about 1 August and continued to produce photographs until he again ran out of material on 10 September. He began to work again at the photography business in the middle of March 1900 and did quite well until the middle of May 1900 when he again ran out of stock and had to quit. Lewis Keir stayed in Dawson until 1950, but Ernest left the north in 1900 and settled in Saskatchewan. He lost the negatives of his Yukon trip in 1913. The Vancouver Public Library has a collection of Keir prints of Dawson and the Chilkoot Trail, 1898. An album consisting of 196 photos of his trip to the Klondike, accompanied by a diary, is in a collection held by the Public Archives of Canada.^1)2)3)4)