at the MUSEUM

Born in Ohio in 1868, Edwin Tappan Adney was an artist, journalist, photographer and ethnologist. He is perhaps best known for ensuring that the art of making birch bark canoes did not disappear, in part through a book that he wrote on this subject.

From 1897 to 1898, Adney worked in the Yukon as a photographer for the New York-based magazine Harper's Weekly. He was one of the first photojournalists to travel to the Klondike to cover the Gold Rush. After returning to New York in 1900, Adney published The Klondike Stampede, an illustrated book of his experiences in the Klondike. He then moved to Montreal where, among other jobs, he worked for the Museum of McGill University as a consultant on aboriginal lore. In 1899, he married Minnie Bell Sharp, the daughter of the celebrated horticulturalist Francis Peabody Sharp, and a well-known pianist and singer in her own right.

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