Career+and+Background

[[image:Queen_of_the_Hurricanes.jpg align="right"]]
= = = Elizabeth Muriel Gregory MacGill (Elsie MacGill) Nickname: Queen of the Hurricanes =


 * Born in Vancouver on March 27, 1905
 * Father: James Henry MacGill, Lawyer
 * Mother: Helen Gregory MacGill, British Columbia's first woman judge and also an advocate for women's right to vote.
 * Elsie was the first Canadian woman to earn a degree in Electrical Engineering
 * When she took a job with Austen Motors in the United States, they started to move into aircraft manufacturing, so she enrolled herself into the University of Michigan.
 * She contracted Polio right before graduation and was told by her doctor that she would never walk again. However, Elsie refused to believe that, so she trained herself to walk with two large metal canes.
 * In 1929, she was the first woman to graduate with a masters degree in Aeronautical Engineering.
 * In 1934, she began working for Fairchild’s Aircrafts Canadian operations in Montreal as an Assistant engineer.
 * In 1938, she was the first woman elected to corporate membership in the Engineering Institute of Canada. Later, she was hired as Chief Aeronautical Engineer at Canada Car and Foundry where she designed a new trainer called "the Maple Leaf Trainer II".


 * Although she could not pilot the plane because of the weak muscles in her legs, she flew on most of the test flights in the observer’s seat. The Maple Lead did not meet Commonwealth standards, not widely built in Canada. However, the CCF had a branch plant in Mexico where the Maple Leaf went into production for their air force as is had excellent high-altitude performance for a trainer, they operate from 7,000ft.
 * She directed the production of the Hawker Hurricane in Canada and designed modifications to equip it for cold weather which included de-icing controls and skis. She supervised over 4500 workers who also built 1,490 Hawker Hurricanes by the end of World War II.
 * Else MacGill also became a symbol of economic changes in Canada and had a comic book written about her called "Queen of the Hurricanes".
 * Elsie died November 3, 1980 in a car accident in Cambridge Massachusetts. She will always be remembered as an advocate for women's rights and that she changed the lives of many.