Reginald Edward George Burroughs (1874-1944) was born in Ashton, Ontario on March 29, 1874. His parents were George Alexander Burroughs and Penina Jane (Argue) Burroughs. In 1891, the census documents Reginald as a tailor apprentice living in Mattawa, Ontario. He was one of ten people living at the same address which included: his two siblings, three step-siblings, his father and step-mother, a domestic servant, and a lodger. His mother, Penina, had died at the age of twenty-two.

Reginald was a brown-haired, blue-eyed merchant tailor and prospector when he married Augusta Martha Parker (1876-1966) from Kitley on February 2, 1898, at the age of twenty four. In 1907, the Burroughs bought the Keyhole House for $3000 and maintained ownership of it for sixteen years. Their son Nelson was seven at the time. Their daughter (Marion Augusta Bethune Burroughs) was most likely born at the Keyhole House, a few months after they moved in. Their son, Gerald Isaiah, died prior to his fourth birthday. This wasn’t the only tragedy they faced; according to Reginald’s WWI file, they had another child who died at birth.

Press clippings document several Burroughs family misadventures. In 1912, The Evening Telegram, St. John’s Newfoundland ran the following headline: Let Son Carry the Riffle, Father Must pay $300 Damages to His Son’s Victim. The article explained that Reginald, a dealer in mining properties, had allowed his twelve-year-old son to carry a rifle. While struggling for possession of the weapon with another boy, it went off; a third boy, Johnny Moran, lost his left eye. In 1913, The New Westminster News wrote that prospector R. E. G. Burroughs had been hired by a party of Ottawa capitalists to survey the Lake Mistassini area in northern Quebec for diamonds. Following a thorough search by Reginald and his team he was quoted, saying “As a diamond country there is nothing doing.”