John Henry Keen

John Henry Keen
Born	1851 England
Died	1950
Nationality	British
Occupation	Anglican missionary, ethnographer and naturalist

John Henry Keen (1851–1950) was an Anglican missionary in Canada, known for translating scriptures into Haida. While serving as a missionary, he also contributed to Canada's natural history, writing on insects he discovered; he had a species of mouse and bat named after him.

John Henry Keen was born in England in 1851; he graduated from a Bible college in Islington in 1873. In 1874 he was sent by the Bishop of London as a missionary at Moose Fort in Ontario. He was ordained by John Horden, Bishop of Moosonee in 1877.

From 1882 to 1889 he was in London where he was first a curate at Spitalfields and later in Islington. In 1890 he left again for Canada where he was based at the northern end of Graham Island in British Columbia. He lived at a village called Massett where several families would share a longhouse which typically had totem poles outside.

Whilst in Canada Keen translated the Book of Common Prayer into Haida; he later translated the gospels of Luke and John and the Acts of the Apostles.

In Masset Keen took an interest in natural history. In 1891 he published his first paper on local beetles (Some British Columbian Coleoptera) and sent off 46 samples for identification to the British Museum. In 1894 he first described the Northwestern deer mouse which was named Keen's mouse or Peromyscus keeni in his honour. He was also the first to scientifically described a type of brown mouse eared bat. This animal is now called Keen's myotis (Myotis keenii Trouessart). In 1896 he also found the first type specimen of what is now known to be a sub-species of northern saw-whet owl.

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