Tarry-a-while was the Banff home of Mary Schäffer, one the Canadian Rockies' most notable woman explorers. Built in 1912 using high-quality local materials in a cottage-style belying its size, it stands today as one of Banff's most important heritage homes.
One of the Canadian Rockies' most compelling stories is that of a young Philadelphia Quaker woman who visited the mountains, fell in love with them and spent much of her active life exploring, painting, photographing, speaking about, and writing about them, before settling down in Banff and making a major contribution to its history and culture.
Mary T. S. Schäffer (later Warren) has captured the imagination of generations of visitors to Banff, Jasper and the Canadian Rockies and many, after reading the accounts of her pioneer explorations, have attempted to follow in her footsteps on the trails she blazed through her beloved mountains. Still others have been drawn to her beautiful Banff home, Tarry-a-while, in order to try capture the spirit of the mountains that she so evoked.
Mary first travelled over the recently completed Canadian Pacific Railway and visited Glacier House hotel high in the Selkirk Range in 1889 with her husband, the noted Philadelphia botanist Dr. Charles Schäffer, who was collecting specimens in preparation for writing a book on mountain wildflowers. For more than a decade, Mary accompanied him on an annual trip to collect around Banff, Lake Louise and Glacier, carefully drying and pressing his specimens and sketching and painting many of them. Schäffer died in 1903 and his much younger widow determined to finish his work, resulted in her completing the collections in 1905 and publishing the book Alpine Flora of the Canadian Rockies, artfully illustrated with her paintings and photographs, in 1907.
Assisting her in her work was a young English guide named William "Billy" Warren who taught her how to ride and how to enjoy camp life in the rugged mountain wilderness away from the fine homes and hotels that she was used to. Upon completion of her botanical work, Mary and her friend Mollie Adams decided that they wanted to explore more deeply into the mountain recesses, even though such activity was thought to be most unladylike in the early years of the new century. Nevertheless, they convinced Warren and fellow guide Sidney Unwin to provide the outfit and knowledge necessary to try find "Chaba Imne," an unknown lake hidden deep in an unexplored mountain valley that they had heard of from the Stoney Indians. This quest, later described in Mary's book, Old Indian Trails of the Canadian Rockies, resulted in the first recorded visit to Jasper's beautiful Maligne Lake in 1908 and became the subject of much subsequent mountain lore.
Upon completion of her explorations, Mary decided to spend more of her time in Banff rather than Philadelphia. She asked Warren to find a lot and build her a home, and by 1912 he had completed construction of a beautiful, large cottage-style home that fit perfectly with its treed Grizzly Street surroundings and boasted beautifully finished V-joint fir planking in its spacious interior. Mary named her new home "Tarry-a-while" and in 1915, in a fairy-tale-like ending to their explorations together, married "my Chief" as she called Warren. He went on to a successful career operating the Alberta Hotel and Cascade Garage on Banff Avenue, while Mary entertained young friends and made regular lecture trips to speak on the glories of the Canadian Rockies in the United States. By the time of her death in 1939, she was regarded as one of Banff's foremost citizens and one of the most interesting individuals in western Canada.
The Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies has been able to acquire much of Mary's collection of writings, photographs, and paintings.
