I. Introduction “The future is uncertain, which is the best thing the future can be, I think,” Miriam Ellis wrote this sentence in her journal during her travels down the MacKenzie River in 1915, when she was thirty five years old. At first glance, it may seem Ellis was referring to World War I which was beginning to turn into catastrophic slaughter on an unprecedented scale that would continue for years. In reality, Ellis was writing about her own future as well as the future of all Western Canadian women rather than the future of the world. Ellis embraced uncertainty and her vision for a new era characterized by empowered prairie women and ushered in by the First Wave of Feminism in Canada. This paper will seek to understand two key features of Ellis’s philosophy of a woman’s changing role in society: personal autonomy, as well as promoting women’s solidarity. Such an analysis of the two most widely circulated works of Ellis shed light on the primary ideals of wild rose feminism in the early 20th century. In the context of Ellis’s writings, wild rose feminism can be defined as a collection of strands of feminism identified in the Western provinces of Canada, where the wild rose was considered the collective symbol of femininity, in the early 1900s.1 Therefore, this paper argues that Miriam Ellis, as a pioneer agricultural journalist in Western Canada, attempts to break down gender barriers in her community so that women are given increasing power. II. Historical Context and Biographical Details The history of the overall struggle for women’s rights has often been described in the context of ‘waves’.2The First Wave of Feminism began in earnest in the late 1800s and early 1900s.3 First Wave Feminists in Canada focused their efforts primarily on gaining legal rights such as the right to vote, also known as women’s suffrage, and property rights with the overall arching theme of expanding the constricted opportunities for women in their nation.4 For instance, in 1916 women won the right to vote provincially in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta.5 This wave of feminism ended because they achieved their two primary goals as well as with the early onset of the Great Depression, shifting the focus of most women from securing their individual rights to ensuring the survival of their family.6 Alberta was at the forefront of this social revolution and not a distant spectator, as some might suspect. Perhaps the greatest gain of this era of Canadian Feminism, occurred in 1929 when The Alberta “Famous Five” petitioned the Privy Council in Britain, after which the council declared that both men and women were persons in Canada.7 In the midst of this social revolution, enters Miriam Green Ellis who was born in 1879 in Richville, New York to Canadian parents.8 Her family returned to Canada because of the promise of their only child’s, Miriam’s, marriage to George Ellis.9 Ellis and her husband then moved to Edmonton in 1904. Ellis was a pioneer agricultural journalist, a widely known male-dominated field in Western Canada, during the years of 1912-1952.10 She had a deep knowledge of agriculture, animals, and farming as well as a keen interest in how people lived and survived. A spirited person, Ellis was also a strong advocate for women's rights, including obtaining the vote, and had a tendency for adventurous activities and travel. Although, it has been noted that she avoided being featured in the Society Pages “like the plague.”11 Over the span of forty years, Ellis published 82 pieces of literature (including newspaper articles, prose, poetry) in the Western Provinces that the University of Alberta has collected individual copies of to date, with the actually total number of writings expected to be much higher than one hundred.12 She was a woman of daring, sarcastic humor, and tough-mindedness, a writer of both non-fiction and fiction, and an avid promoter of rural life and agricultural communities. Her writings provide some details into the current of thoughts which streamed through her consciousness during her career; but curious gaps or omissions about her overall leitmotif, or theme, remain to this day. For instance, after being dismissed from the Canadian Expeditionary Forces, Ellis’s husband George Ellis returned to Eastern Ontario, which began a long-term separation between him and Miriam.13 However, no record of a divorce exists.14 In fact, Miriam always signed her writings as Miriam Green Ellis as a sort of convention; yet no obituary or memoir of Ellis mentions George Ellis or their childless marriage.15 Consequently, in many ways, Ellis’s own views on gender roles within marriage remain a mystery and cannot be extrapolated from the biographical data available in the University of Alberta Special Collections archive. III. Analysis of “My Car Finnigan and I” Article The article titled “My Car Finnigan and I” was published in the Grain Growers’ Guide on Apri