Q: Iphoto quit working with Canon Rebel T4i

Greetings,

I am running a late 2009 Macbook Pro OS X 10.6.8 with Iphoto 8.1.2. My go to camera is a Canon Rebel T4i and I shoot in Raw almost without exception. File format is .cr2. I have been able to import my Raw photos without issue for several months until today when I received an error message from Iphoto informing me that the photos I wished to transfer were in an incompatible format and could not be imported. I can clearly see the pictures I want to import in iphoto so the program is at least able to generate a preview but it will not import giving me the above mentioned error message. What am I missing and what can be done to correct this short of updating my entire operating system and iphoto? What can I say, I like Snow Leopard.