Mary Schäffer Warren

Mary Schäffer Warren (1861–1939) was an American-Canadian naturalist, illustrator, photographer, and writer. She was known for her experiences in the Canadian Rockies in the early 20th century.

Biography Warren was born Mary Townsend Sharples in 1861 in West Chester, Pennsylvania. She studied flower painting with George Cochran Lambdin. In 1890 she married Dr. Charles Schäffer, an amateur botanist, whom she had met the previous year at Glacier House, the Canadian Pacific Railway's hotel in the Selkirk Mountains. The couple would spend summers and autumns traveling in the Canadian Rockies. Their winters were spent in Philadelphia.

Schäffer exhibited her photographs independently at the 1900 Paris Exposition. In 1904, Schäffer returned to the Canadian Rockies with her friend Mary "Mollie" Adams determined to complete a botanical guide that her husband had started. In 1907 Alpine Flora of the Canadian Rocky Mountains was published, with text by Stewardson Brown and drawings and photographs by Schäffer. 1907 also saw Schäffer transition from using a folding camera and glass plate negatives for her work to using celluloid film. Tour Boat named the "Mary Schaffer" on the lake that she first recorded, Maligne Lake.

Schäffer's inexperience at surveying took its toll. Knowing full well that media attention awaited her return to Edmonton, she struggled through an initial false start followed by a loss of the surveying spool overboard. After nearly a month's wait for a new spool to be sent from Toronto, she was finally able to complete an accurate survey. Dr. Dowling encouraged her to send her measurements and map, complete with the names she had given various features around the lake, to the Geographical Board in Ottawa. Despite some opposition, Mary’s names were retained.

Schäffer's work was in part responsible for the incorporation of Maligne Lake in Jasper National Park.

Mary Schäffer Warren published articles and books about her explorations of the Rockies.

She died in 1939 in Banff.

In 1908 she wrote a book titled Among the sources of the Saskatchewan and Athabasca rivers.

Legacy In 1909, a mountain in Yoho National Park was named Mount Schaffer in her honor. In 2003, the University of Alberta named their newest student residence Schäffer Hall as a tribute to Schäffer Warren.

Janice Sanford Beck is the author of “No Ordinary Woman: The Story of Mary Schäffer Warren” (Rocky Mountain Books, 2001). Her latest works, “Life of the Trail 1” and “Life of the Trail 2”, are collaborations with Emerson Sanford that retrace the footsteps of early travelers (including David Thompson, Sir James Hector, and Mary Schäffer) in and around eastern Banff National Park and northern Yoho National Park.