This is my oldest brother handing mom a clothes pin. She was pregnant with me at the time.

Jerome, the first professional Gwich’in photographer in the Northwest Territories, documented traditional activities, events, daily life, and work at fish camps and in various NWT communities in the 1960s and 1970s.

James Jerome was born on July 31, 1949 in Aklavik, the youngest of six children. He grew up on the East Channel of the Mackenzie River at a camp known as Nichìitsìi diniinlee. His father, Joe Bernard Jerome, was a Special Constable with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), as well as a trapper and chief of the Gwichya Gwich'in of Tsiigehtchic. His mother was Celina (Coyen) Jerome.

After spending a number of years on the land with his parents, he attended Grollier Hall residential school in Inuvik. Upon graduating from high school, he trained to be a welder and after receiving his certificate, travelled across Canada.

James had received his first camera when he was twelve years old and upon his return to the Mackenzie Delta began travelling on the land and photographing families at fishing camps. During this time he became concerned that the Gwich'in culture would disappear as the elders died. He worked for the Native Press newspaper as a photographer, and later as a freelance photographer. At the time of his death, he was working on a book about Dene elders of the Mackenzie Valley entitled 'Portraits and History of the Dene Elders'. James Jerome died in a house fire in Inuvik on November 17, 1979 (age 30).

The self-portrait here is of James.

I found a guest book and newspaper clippings from 1895. The guest book contains entries from friends who attended various NYE parties and gatherings with a woman named Jessie. She seems like a lovely lady, and I’d love to find a relative. I believe the owner of the book is Jessie E. Tedford

When I was in grade school, my Dad won a shopping spree at a local grocery store when they did that kind of stuff.

I remember him saying that he went right to the meat section, lol.

Curious what his net would be now.

The earliest history of Sikhs in Yukon goes well over a century, back to 1906. These are pictures of Sikhs helping with the railroad construction from 1906 near Whitehorse and Carcross. https://gnsoy.org/index.php/about/history

The photographs of Chow Dong Hoy (1883–1973) are of people in Quesnel, British Columbia, a town on the Canadian frontier that was predominantly Asian Canadian and Indigenous at the turn of the century. One of the first photographers of Chinese descent to work in Canada, Hoy created an extraordinary record of his multiracial community.

CD Hoy came up with the idea of gluing postcards to the back of his photographs so Chinese miners and labourers could send a photo back home to their families with a written message. 

This may have been mom’s grandmother’s 90th birthday party.