Elsie MacGill: Canada's First Woman Engineer
Designed the Maple Leaf II Trainer, Adapted the Hawker Hurricane
Aug 3, 2008
Her exterior of pretty, fine features and slender build did not give a clue to the indomitable strength of spirit intrinsic to Elsie MacGill. Born Elizabeth Muriel Gregory MacGill in 1905 to upper-middle class Vancouver parents, Elsie’s father was a lawyer, her mother a judge: the first woman judge in British Columbia. Judge Helen MacGill was also a suffragist for women’s rights, no doubt inspiring her daughter with positive aspirations.
Attending the University of Toronto, Elsie graduated in 1927 as the first woman in Canada with an electrical engineering degree in hand. She accepted a position with the Austin Automobile Company in Pontiac, Michigan, just in time for their introduction to aircraft manufacturing. Aeronautics, it seems, captured Elsie’s imagination, noted Collections Canada. Enrolling at the University of Michigan, she graduated in 1929 with her Masters Degree in Aeronautical Engineering. Once again, she was the first woman to hold such degree. But the horizon held surprises for the talented engineer, and they were not all pleasant.
Slowed by Polio
An unexpected challenge presented itself the same year Elsie received her aeronautical degree. “Acute Infantile Myelitis”, a form of polio, struck her down. Polio is a viral disease that affects the central nervous system and may cause permanent or temporary paralysis. Staring at the grim prognosis of never walking again, Elsie refused to be daunted. To support herself and pay her medical bills, she wrote articles about aviation for magazines. She also used her time for further education, enrolling at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to complete her Doctoral degree. And Elsie began to recover. It was not an easy task, though. After much determined effort and using two canes, she was able to get around on her own two feet.
Stepping back into her work in the aeronautics field in 1934, Elsie took a post as Assistant Aeronautical Engineer with Fairchild Aircraft Ltd. in Longueuil, Quebec. Four years later, she moved on to the Canadian Car and Foundry Company in a position suited to her education and skills: Chief Aeronautical Engineer. As the world’s first woman aircraft designer, Dr. Elsie MacGill designed the essential Canadian trainer airplanes, the Maple Leaf II. Due to her disability, she was not able to become a pilot and test her creation herself, but she was aboard the plane on all test flights.
Hawker Hurricane Adaptation
During WWII, Hawker Hurricane fighter airplanes were in urgent production for use in the Battle of Britain. Now a powerful leader, Elsie “was in charge of all engineering work, adapting the Hurricane to fly in cold weather,” Collections Canada stated. “Between 1939 and 1943, Can-Car built 1,451 Hawker Hurricanes under her leadership.” She also was lead engineer for the United States Navy’s Curtiss-Wright Helldiver fighter planes.
Home and family were not left out of Dr. MacGill’s life. Elsie married William Soulsby in 1943, but set another first for the era by keeping her own last name. The new family (Soulsby was a widower with two children) moved to Toronto, Ontario, where Elsie began her own aeronautical engineering consulting firm. She also took on the role of the first woman Technical Advisor of the Civil Aviation Organization to the United Nations in 1946.
Dr. Elsie MacGill received numerous awards and honours for the inroads she made in her career. To list only a few:
- 1941 Gzowskie Medal of the Engineering Institute of Canada
- 1953 Award from the American Society of Women Engineers (She was the first non-American to receive the honour.)
- 1967 Canada’s Centennial Medal
- 1971 The Order of Canada
- 1973 The Julian Smith Award, Engineering Institute of Canada
- 1975 Amelia Earhart Medal, International Association of Women Pilots
- 1979 Gold Medal from the Association of Professional Engineers of Ontario
- “Queen of the Hurricane: Elsie MacGill” was published during the 1940’s, a comic book that described the accomplishments of the inspiring woman.
Member of the Royal Commission
Following in her mother’s path, Elsie was interested in the betterment of women’s lives. She became a Commissioner on the Royal Commission on the Status of Women in 1966, making her mark with differing, modern views. An example provided by Collections Canada said Elsie, in a “Separate Statement”, “wanted abortion removed from the entirety of the Criminal Code,” and urged paid maternity leaves for mothers. She also wrote a book about her mother, “My Mother the Judge: A Biography of Helen Gregory MacGill,” published in 1955.
Becoming a trail-blazer did not seem like anything special to her. “I’m no hero. I was lucky,” she was quoted on Inventive Women, “I got a good education. So my mother was a judge; so what? I didn’t think it was any more remarkable for a woman being a judge than it was for me to be an engineer.”
After a long and remarkable life of opening closed doors for herself and other women in science, engineering and business, Dr. Elsie MacGill died in 1980. Posthumously, she was inducted into the Canadian Science and Engineering Hall of Fame, and into the Canadian Aviation Hall of Fame.
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