Elsie MacGill

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UofT graduation photo
UofT graduation photo

Elizabeth Muriel Gregory "Elsie" MacGill (March 27, 1905 – November 4, 1980)[1], made famous as the Queen of the Hurricanes, was an aeronautical engineer during World War II who did much to make Canada a powerhouse of airplane construction during her years at Canada Car and Foundry in Fort William, Ontario. After her work at CC&F she ran a successful consulting business, and became famous again in 1967-1970 as a commissioner on the Royal Commission on the Status of Women in Canada, which produced the Royal Commission Report on the Status of Women in 1970.[2]

Contents

[edit] Early life and Education

Elsie was born in Vancouver on March 27, 1905, daughter of James Henry MacGill, a prominent Vancouver lawyer, and Helen Gregory MacGill, British Columbia's first woman judge. Her mother was an advocate of women's suffrage and influenced Elsie's decision to study engineering. She became the first Canadian woman to graduate with a degree in electrical engineering from the University of Toronto in 1927.

She took a job with Austen Motors in the US, and when they started to move into aircraft manufacturing she enrolled at the University of Michigan in aeronautical engineering. In 1929, she was the first woman in North America to graduate with a masters degree in aeronautical engineering. Just before graduating she was struck by polio[1]. She was told that she would probably spend the rest of her life in a wheelchair, but refused to accept that possibility and forced herself to learn to walk with two strong metal canes. To help pay her bills, she wrote magazine articles about planes and flying[3], while beginning doctoral studies at MIT in Boston[1].

[edit] Canada Car and Foundry

Elsie MacGill during her CCF years
Elsie MacGill during her CCF years

In 1934, she started work at Fairchild Aircraft's Canadian operations in Montreal, as Assistant Engineer. In 1938, she was the first woman elected to corporate membership in the Engineering Institute of Canada.

Later that year she was hired as Chief Aeronautical Engineer at Canada Car and Foundry, where she designed and tested a new trainer, the Maple Leaf Trainer II.[4] The Maple Leaf was designed and first built in CCF's Ft. William (now Thunder Bay) factories, where she had moved. Although the Maple Leaf II did not enter service with any Commonwealth forces, a number were sold to Mexico where its high altitude performance was important given the many airfields it had to operate from.

At the time Ft. William did not even have a road connection to the rest of Canada, served entirely by rail and boats on Lake Superior. Things soon changed when the factory was selected to build the Hawker Hurricane for the RAF, and quickly expanded from about 500 workers to 4,500 by war's-end, half of them women[4]. For much of the war her primary task was to streamline operations in the construction of the Hawker Hurricane, eventually producing over 1,400 of them by 1943 when production ended[5]. She was also responsible for the fitting of skis and development of de-icing controls for winter operations[4]. She wrote a paper on the experience, Factors affecting mass production of aeroplanes. Her role in this successful production run made her famous, even to the point of a comic book being published in the United States about her, using her then-famous nickname, Queen of the Hurricanes[4]. Numerous popular stories in the media were published on her as well, reflecting public fascination with this female engineer.

Afer the Hurricane production line ended, the factory looked for new work and ended up with a contract from the US Navy to build SB2C Helldivers. This production did not go nearly as smoothly, and a continual stream of minor changes from Curtiss-Wright meant that full-scale production took a long time to get started. MacGill and E.J. Soulsby, the former works manager of Canadian Car, were married in 1943[4]. MacGill and Soulsby then moved to Toronto and set up an aeronautical consulting business. In 1946, she was the first woman to serve as Technical Advisor for ICAO, where she helped to draft International Air Worthiness regulations for the design and production of commercial aircraft. In 1947 she was Chairman of the Stress Analysis Committee of this part of the United Nations, the first woman to chair a committee in the UN.

[edit] Awards and Activism

A paper published by MacGill on her work in 1940, Factors Affecting the Mass Production of Aeroplanes, won her the Gzowski Medal from the Engineering Institute of Canada in 1941[6]. In March 1953, the American Society of Women Engineers made her an honorary member with a medal and named her "Woman Engineer of the Year," the first time that the Award had gone out of the United States[6]. She was awarded the Centennial Medal by the Canadian government in 1967, the Ninety-Nines awarded her the Amelia Earhart Medal in 1975, and in 1979 the Ontario Association of Professional Engineers presented her with their gold medal.

In the 1960s she devoted considerable time and energy to women's organizations, serving as national president of the Canadian Federation of Business and Professional Women's Clubs from 1962 to 1964[7] In 1967 she was named to the Royal Commission on the Status of Women and co-authored the report published in 1970. She was also a member of the Ontario Status of Women Committee, an affiliate of the National Action Committee on the Status of Women. For this work she was given the Order of Canada in 1971[8]. MacGill once said: "I have received many engineering awards, but I hope I will also be remembered as an advocate for the rights of women and children."

Elsie MacGill died on November 4, 1980 in Cambridge, Massachusetts after a short illness[9]. Three years later she was inducted into the Canada's Aviation Hall of Fame, and in 1992 she was a founding inductee in the Canadian Science and Engineering Hall of Fame in Ottawa.

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b c Wakewich, Patricia. ""Queen of the Hurricanes": Elsie Gregory MacGill, aeronautical engineer and women's advocate." (2001). In Framing Our Past: Canadian Women's History in the Twentieth Century, S.A. Cook, L.R. McLean, and K. O'Rourke, eds. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press. p. 396
  2. ^ Morris, Cerise. "Royal Commission on the Status of Women in Canada." The Canadian Encyclopedia.
  3. ^ Elsie MacGill - Queen of the Hurricanes from the CBC
  4. ^ a b c d e Wakewich p. 397
  5. ^ Hatch, Sybil. Changing Our World: True Stories of Women Engineers. (2006). Reston, Va.: American Society of Civil Engineers, p. 148.
  6. ^ a b Wakewich p. 400
  7. ^ Fraser, David. "Elizabeth Muriel Gregory MacGill." The Canadian Encyclopedia.
  8. ^ Wakewich p. 401
  9. ^ Green, John J. "Obituary-Elizabeth (Elsie) Gregory MacGill, FC AS1, 1905-1980. Unpublished text from memorial service held Wed. Nov. 26, 1980, University of Toronto Archives." Cited in Wakewich, p.401.

[edit] External links

[edit] Bibliography

  • MacGill, E.M.G. "Factors affecting mass production of aeroplanes". (Sept. 19, 1940). Flight, v 38, n 1656, p 228-231.
  • MacGill, E.M.G. My mother, the judge: a biography of Judge Helen Gregory MacGill. (1955). Toronto: Ryerson Press; reprinted in 1981 by Toronto: PMA Books, ISBN 0-88778-210-8.
  • Saxberg, Kelly. (1999). Rosies of the North. Montreal: National Film Board of Canada. A documentary about the Canadian Car and Foundry Company during WWII when Elsie MacGill was chief engineer there. [1] IMDB.
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