Elsie MacGill
Told she would never walk again, she ran the factory that built Canada's Hurricane fighters
Elsie MacGill was born in Vancouver to a mother who became the first woman judge in British Columbia, and grew up assuming that women could do anything. She was the only woman in her class when she graduated in electrical engineering from the University of Toronto in 1927, and went on to the University of Michigan for a master's degree in aeronautical engineering, the first awarded to a woman anywhere.
Days before her graduation in 1929 she fell ill with polio and was told she would probably never walk again. She spent three years at home, refused a wheelchair, taught herself to walk with two metal canes and earned money writing about aviation. She used the canes for the rest of her life.
In 1938 she became chief aeronautical engineer at Canadian Car and Foundry in Fort William, Ontario. She designed the Maple Leaf Trainer II, the first aircraft designed by a woman. When the war began the plant was given the contract to build Hawker Hurricane fighters. MacGill reorganised production, adapted the aircraft for Canadian winters with skis and de-icing, and oversaw the growth of the workforce from about 500 to 4,500. More than 1,400 Hurricanes were built. An American comic book called her Queen of the Hurricanes.
After the war she ran her own consultancy and served on Canada's Royal Commission on the Status of Women, arguing for paid maternity leave and equal pay.