On Thursday, December 8th, the federal government announced that Viola Desmond was chosen and thus would be the new face on the Canadian $10 bill in 2018. In 1946, Desmond’s stand at a segregated Nova Scotia movie theatre made her into a civil-rights heroine.
I have to agree that the Bank probably made the right choice for Canada though I had a personal interest in seeing another of the five, Elsie Gregory MacGill (1905-1980), selected.
I have often said that I feel fortunate to have carried Elsie’s image around in my head, after learning of her story some 25 years ago when she was included as an inaugural inductee to the Canadian Science and Engineering Hall of Fame and then, with more intensity, in researching her biography, Her Daughter the Engineer: The Life of Elsie Gregory MacGill, published by Canadian Science Publishing in 2008.
Vancouver born Elsie MacGill was the world’s first woman aeronautical engineer and aircraft designer, celebrated during World War II as “Queen of the Hurricanes” for her role in the mass production of the Hawker Hurricanes at the Canadian Car and Foundry aircraft plant in Fort William. Earlier, at Fairchild Aircraft near Montreal, she helped in the development of a string of innovative bush planes, including the first all-metal fuselage aircraft constructed in Canada.
Later in life, MacGill dove into the cause of women’s rights as national president of the Canadian Federation of Business and Professional Women’s Clubs, and subsequently, as effective vice-chair of the landmark Royal Commission on the Status of Women in Canada, thereby influencing national policies, often through words that were reflected in federal legislation for decades to follow.
For many of those familiar with her story and for those who will learn it in the years ahead, one of the most striking features of all these achievements flows from knowing that Elsie realized them with a significant disability. On the eve of her 1929 graduation from the University of Michigan, 24-year-old Elsie MacGill fell ill to awaken the next morning fully paralyzed from the waist down. She had been struck by a form of polio and would spend the next three years confined to bed and a wheelchair at her parents’ Vancouver home. Her plans for a wedding and the launch of her engineering career were cancelled, and she had reason to wonder whether her personal and professional lives would ever recover.
But she kept her career aspirations alive by writing journal and magazine articles on aviation from her bed, and slowly she regained enough strength to use metal walking sticks to get around. As soon as she was self-sufficient, she moved back east to MIT, and then to the string of industry projects that made her mark and reputation in engineering and in international aviation safety.
Though Elsie faded from the public mind—at times—in past years, she enjoyed a high profile at many points of her life, and the publication of Her Daughter the Engineer helped secure other recognitions for her. She has been named as a Person of National Historic Significance, awards have been created in her honour, and another full biography has been published, the thorough and well-researched Queen of the Hurricanes by Dr. Crystal Sissons.
Those who learn of Elsie MacGill for the first time wonder where she found the strength and motivation to persist through disabling illness; periods of economic, social and military struggles; and gender bias that denied her some professional opportunities. My book and other historians often point to the role model of her mother Helen, a suffragette and first woman judge in British Columbia, and the support of her husband and other family. But those who knew Elsie best also suggest that she was often buoyed through hardship and challenge by a “rare sense of humour and scintillating sense of fun.”
I was excited to think that Elsie’s image might grace our currency and that more Canadians would be given the opportunity to learn about this special person—someone who had fun while striving to improve the world and to do her best in challenging circumstances. But I regard the opportunity to keep Elsie’s memory alive through her biographies, talks all over the world, and, of course, her nomination for the bank note as a gift in and of itself. I am encouraged that more Canadians, now than ever, know about the life of Elsie MacGill. And for myself, I can thank the Bank of Canada for the gift of teaching me and all Canadians about the work of Viola Desmond and all the women nominated whom I will now strive to know better.
