Elizabeth Muriel Gregory “Elsie” MacGill was born in Vancouver, Canada. Her mother and maternal grandmother were active in the suffrage movement, and she grew up on feminist values. Before attending secondary school, she was home-schooled, receiving drawing lessons from artists Emily Carr and swimming lessons from Joe Fortes, the official lifeguard of Vancouver.
In 1921, at 16, she started studying applied science at the University of British Columbia. Then, she continued studying at the University of Toronto School of Practical Science, becoming the first woman in Canada to earn a degree in electrical engineering. Upon graduating, she worked as a mechanical engineer at an automobile company in Pontiac, Michigan. At the time, the company started to produce airplanes, and she decided to study aeronautics. She enrolled at the University of Michigan, and in 1929, 24-years-old MacGill became the first woman in the world to earn an aeronautical engineering degree.
After contracting polio that year, MacGill had to use a wheelchair temporarily and then a cane for the rest of her life. While recovering in Vancouver, she designed an aircraft and wrote articles on aviation to make a living. As soon as she got back on her feet, she continued to doctoral studies at MIT.
In 1934, at 29, she returned to Canada and worked as an assistant aeronautical engineer at Fairchild Aircraft Ltd. Four years later, she became a member of the Engineering Institute of Canada, the first woman in the association. Later that year, she accepted a position as a chief aeronautical engineer at Canadian Car & Foundry (Can-Car), the first woman worldwide to hold a role on this scale. As part of her job, she engineered, designed, constructed, and tested the Maple Leaf II Trainer. Despite never being produced, the aircraft was recognized as the first to be designed and created by a woman.
MacGill’s next project was to oversee the retooling of the Can-Car plant, preparing it for the mass production of the Hawker Hurricane, one of the main fighters of Canada and the Allies used in the Battle of Britain during WW2. Between 1938 and 1943, she oversaw the production of over 1,400 Hurricanes. It got her a lot of publicity, and various articles were published about the “women engineer,” gaining the nickname Queen of the Hurricanes.
When the Hawker Hurricane contract ended, MacGill became in charge of the retooling of the plant to produce the American Curtiss-Wright Helldiver. Following a disagreement over the design of the aircraft, she and the plant’s manager, E.J. (William) Soulsby, left the company. They married and moved to Toronto, where she founded an aeronautical consulting company focusing on civilian aircraft.
In 1946, at 41, she became the first woman to be appointed as Technical Advisor for International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), and two years later, she was elected to chair the United Nations Stress Analysis Committee, the first woman to chair a UN committee.
Over the coming decades, MacGill dedicated most of her time and efforts to the women’s rights movement, promoting equality in the engineering field and lobbying for women’s reproductive rights. She was involved with the Canadian Federation of Business and Professional Women’s Clubs (CFBPWC), serving as its provincial president from 1956 to 1958 and as its national president from 1962 to 1964, and was a member of the Ontario Status of Women Committee and served on the Royal Commission on the Status of Women in Canada. She died at the age of 75.
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