Canadian Elsie MacGill was the first female aeronautical engineer in the world
Her work on aircraft design helped defeat the Nazis.
In July 1940, the German war machine has run roughshod over much over Europe, with the Nazis occupying Poland, Holland, Belgium, Denmark, Norway and France. Many people fear England will be next.
To defend British skies from the dreaded Luftwaffe (the German Air Force), Britain will need to increase the size of the Royal Air Force. That means they'll need more planes — and fast. Some of those planes are being made thousands of miles away, on the shores of Lake Superior, under the watchful eye of a remarkable woman.
Until two years earlier, the Canadian Car and Foundry Plant (CanCar) in Fort William, Ontario (now part of Thunder Bay) had been a small railcar manufacturer. Then Elsie MacGill shows up and everything changes.
MacGill has been hired as the chief aeronautical engineer, charged with turning the plant into an airplane factory. She defies expectations in a number of ways. When she contracted polio nine years earlier, she was told she'd never walk again — but she is upright and mobile, with the help of two canes. She's also the first woman aeronautical engineer in the world. And her rise through the engineering world has been rapid. She's made head engineer of CanCar before the age of 35.
A series of firsts
All this is remarkable to people who didn't know Elsie MacGill — but for those who did, it wasn't shocking. She was raised to defy expectations.
To a MacGill, being the "first woman [blank]" was the family business. Her mother, Helen Gregory MacGill, was the first female undergraduate at Toronto's Trinity College — now part of the University of Toronto — and the first woman to earn a degree in music in the British Empire. She was a lawyer and in 1917, she became a judge, making her the first female judge in British Columbia, and only the third in Canada. She was also one of B.C.'s most vocal proponents for women's suffrage. She spent 23 years presiding over Vancouver's Juvenile Court.
A passion for learning
The MacGills want their daughters to have every advantage, so they turn the top floor of their house into a classroom. There, Elsie and her sister study French and learn to read and write. They're taught various sports and even take drawing and painting lessons from the legendary Emily Carr.
By her late teens, Elsie MacGill has developed a strong interest in science. She decides to pursue a career in engineering, virtually unheard of for a woman at the time.
She enrolls at the University of British Columbia, but leaves to head east and attend the University of Toronto. In 1927, she graduates with a degree in electrical engineering, becoming the first Canadian woman to do so. She moves to the U.S., taking a job with the Austin Automobile Company in Michigan. When Austin begins to manufacture airplanes, MacGill becomes fascinated with aeronautical engineering and decides to pursue a masters degree in the field at the University of Michigan. She graduates in 1929.
Defying expectations
That same year, MacGill is struck with acute infantile myelitis, a form of polio. Doctors tell her she'll never walk again, but she eventually does, with the aid of two metal canes. During her recovery, she begins writing about aircraft and flying. By 1932, she is healthy enough to return to her graduate studies and begins doctoral work at MIT, before being lured back to Canada by a job offer from Fairchild Aircraft in Longueil, Quebec. She specializes in stress analysis and develops a reputation for bravery thanks to her insistence on going up for the test flights of all the planes she designs.
In 1938, MacGill becomes the first female member of the Engineering Institute of Canada. That same year, she is hired on as chief aeronautical engineer at CanCar, overseeing its transition from railcar to aircraft manufacturing. Initially, CanCar builds the Maple Leaf II training plane. While it's based on the design of a previous plane, MacGill is responsible for a major reengineering and redesign, and the Maple Leaf II is recognized as the first plane designed by a woman. After war is declared, the factory moves to building Hawker Hurricane fighters.
She pioneers a new, modular construction system. Each part will be precisely machined. Her idea is for the planes to fit together "like a child's Meccano set." Each part will be identical on each plane. That way, if push comes to shove, they can be repaired using materials from planes downed in action. CanCar delivers its first Hurricane within a year. The first order of 40 planes comes in ahead of schedule, meaning they make it to the UK in time for the Battle of Britain.
At its peak, CanCar employs 4,500 workers — half of them women — and produces between three and four planes per week. By the end of the war, the factory has turned out over 2,000 fighter aircraft. MacGill's work on the Hurricane will have her immortalized in comic book form in the story Queen of the Hurricanes.
Elsie after the war: consultant, author, feminist
In 1943, MacGill marries CanCar's plant manager, widower named E.J. (Bill) Soulsby, and the couple leave CanCar and move to Toronto. There, Elsie sets up her own engineering consulting firm, working mostly on civilian aircraft projects. She later becomes the Canadian representative to the United Nations International Civil Aviation Organization.
In 1947, MacGill's mother dies. She begins writing My Mother the Judge: A Biography of Helen Gregory MacGill, which is published in 1955. This project inspires her to be more outspoken in her feminist beliefs. Radical for her time, MacGill is firmly pro-choice. She becomes a commissioner on the Royal Commission on the Status of Women. In the 1970s, after years of silence, she begins to speak out about the discrimination she faced as a woman in a field that was almost entirely male. She continues working as a consultant into her 70s. In 1979, she wins the Gold Medal from the Association of Professional Engineers Ontario, the organization's highest honour.
In 1980, MacGill dies suddenly while visiting her sister in Massachusetts. After her death, she will be the subject of two books: Her Daughter the Engineer, published in 2008, and Queen of the Hurricanes, published in 2014. She also figures prominently in the NFB documentary Rosies of the North. But MacGill's greatest legacy is still the impact her Hurricanes had in helping to win the Battle of Britain.