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They are two women’s voices living in two different centuries and two very different worlds, but there are many similarities that came to light between Mary Schäffer – explorer, writer, photographer, artist – and Meghan J. Ward, Artsci’07, when the latter set out to record and retrace Schäffer’s steps during the last few days of her trail-blazing 1908 expedition to Maligne Lake in Jasper National Park.

Ward and film co-producer and director Trixie Pacis assembled a group of women, including writer Jane Marshall along with photographer Natalie Gillis (also a poet and pilot) and cinematographer Eva Anandi Brownstein to take the six-day trip. Gillis was tasked with recreating some of the still images Schäffer took on her much earlier expedition. The resulting film, Wildflowers, premiered at the Banff Centre Mountain Film Festival in November 2024 and continues to screen at festivals and events worldwide.

Mary Schäffer was born in 1861 to a conservative Quaker family in Pennsylvania and, as a mountain explorer, was known for trading her skirt for breeches as soon as she was out of sight of mainstream society. She was amongst the first non-Indigenous people to explore Maligne Lake and she and trail mate Mollie Adams were the first women to explore many areas in the wilds of the Rockies. She was asked by the Geological Survey of Canada to survey the lake in 1911, a time when women weren't even invited on survey parties.

As International Women’s Day is marked around the world this month, we asked if paying tribute to a trailblazer and feminist was important to her as a mother of two girls. Ward says it was.

“Definitely – not just for my girls, but for all girls,” she says. “We need to shine a light on these women who have often been left out of the history books. I want my girls to see these examples of women who accomplished remarkable things and were true trailblazers. I want them to also understand the whole picture, because Mary's life really overlapped with a period of significant colonial and settler movement in the mountains and the forced removal of Indigenous Peoples.”

Like Schäffer, Ward, too, left a conservative upbringing in Ottawa to go live in the mountains and pursue a creative career after falling in love with the landscape. In retrospect, she did, however, have glimmers of a future writing career at Queen’s when she was majoring in drama and minoring in global development studies.

“During my last year, I didn't really know what I wanted to do with my life and career,” she explains. “Several of my university professors encouraged me to consider writing and editing.”

Photo credit: Natalie Gillis

A century earlier, Schäffer also fell for the natural beauty of the Rockies. “The unknown has glamour indescribable,” she wrote. “It creeps into the blood, it calls silently, but nonetheless its call is irresistible and strong.” Ward, also an historian, can relate.

“She was unconventional in so many ways – so far ahead of her time,” Ward says. “She accomplished things and went after things when women were shunned for doing them, not just discouraged.”

Of the six-day journey the film participants took, Ward says it was a deeply spiritual experience.

“I had a copy of Mary’s book with me on the trail, so as we were approaching different parts, I would read aloud so we could experience her words as she visited those same places,” Ward recounts. “It was a powerful experience to be lifting her words off the page and living them for myself.”

Photo credit: Natalie Gillis

Tragedy is another place where Schäffer and Ward connected. Schäffer’s first expedition off the rail lines and into the Rockies took place when she was 43 and was recently widowed. She and her botanist husband, Charles Schäffer, 20 years her senior, had visited the Rockies by rail previously. She also lost her parents that year and describes her return to the Rockies as a spiritual journey and herself as a “hunter of peace.”

The similarities continued as Ward faced tragedy when, just 10 months after the expedition, as they were putting the finishing touches on the film, Gillis was killed when her twin-engine Piper PA 31 Navajo aircraft crashed less than two minutes after takeoff from Albany International Airport.

“With everything that transpired after the fact with Natalie, I came to a new way of relating to Mary's quest for peace,” Ward says. “She explained in letters later in life that she went into the mountains as a way to connect with people she had lost, and as a place of healing. It wasn't a place for her to conquer anything, and she never claimed to have done anything first or discovered anything, unlike many of her counterparts at the time.”

Photo credit: Anandi Brownstein

Schäffer later married Billy Warren, who was on the Maligne Lake expedition and was 20 years her junior, making her fondness for fellow adventurers clear. As the film quotes from her writing, and borrows for its title: “Nature meant us all to be wildflowers, not house plants.” Ward, too, is married to a fellow mountain adventurer, Canadian landscape photographer Paul Zizka.

Learn more and find screenings of Ward’s film at .