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Claude Britiff Tidd was born in England on May 21, 1886. In 1910 he left his family to come to Canada, working as a farmhand, storekeeper, surveyor, piano player in a movie house, and locomotive repairman until 1914. He joined the Royal North West Mounted Police (RNWMP) in September 1914. After a year in Regina he was sent north. Tidd was posted in a variety of Yukon communities, including Teslin, Dawson City, Ross River, Rampart House, Mayo and Old Crow. Tidd served with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) for 21 years, retiring September 10, 1935. Tidd then worked in Mayo, Forty Mile, Twelve Mile, and the Rock Creek intake on the Klondike River. In 1945-1946, he was Northern Commercial Company (NCCo.) storekeeper at Old Crow. Tidd met Mary Esther Ryder in Dawson City and they married in Fort Yukon in 1925. He was an avid photographer, filmmaker, writer and musician. He played the piano with several bands and the saxophone with the Dawson City Orchestra. He wrote and published a few articles on northern photography, but most of his writing and photography was intended to record the lifestyle he experienced in the Yukon. Mary and Claude Tidd left the Yukon in 1947 for Dersingham, England, where Claude died on June 12, 1949.
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