Elsie MacGill - Early Life and Education

Early Life and Education

MacGill was born in Vancouver on 27 March 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 her decision to study engineering. MacGill graduated from the University of Toronto in 1927, was the first Canadian woman to earn a degree in aeronautical engineering.

Following graduation, she took a junior job with a firm in Pontiac, Michigan. While there, she began part-time graduate studies in aeronautical engineering at the University of Michigan, enrolling in the fall of 1927 in the full-time Master of Science in Engineering program to begin aircraft design work and conduct research and development in the University's new aeronautics facilities. In 1929, she became the first woman in North America, likely the world, to be awarded a masters degree in aeronautical engineering.

Contracting polio just before her graduation, MacGill was told that she would probably spend the rest of her life in a wheelchair. She refused to accept that possibility, however, and learned to walk supported by two strong metal canes. She wrote magazine articles about aircraft and flying to help finance her doctoral studies at MIT in Cambridge.