Today, the following Elsie Gregory MacGill Heritage Minute was launched by Hisotrica Canada:
This is an excellent project that I was happy to be a part of! Congratulations to all the dedicated staff at Historica Canada for making this possible!
When I first started working on the history of Elsie Gregory MacGill in 2003, she was barely known in Canada, despite the fact that she had been a wartime celebrity during the Second World War. Usually when I mentioned her name the response was "Elsie who?" even within engineering circles!
Since that time, a lost has happened to raise her profile from books like The Queen of the Hurricanes to inclusion in a postage stamp collection and standing in the top five for the Canadian ten dollar bill. More information about the various mentions can be found on this blog.
There is more to this work than simply getting her name on the tip of people's tongues. By fleshing out her story the history of Canadian women is enriched and more is known about women in science, technology, engineering and math or the STEM disciplines.
Elsie's story is one that traces a wide range of different developments in Canadian history during her lifetime from 1905-1980. By learning about her life it is possible to better better understand professional education, the engineering profession, feminism, technological and social development in Canada to name a few. In an effort to paint a picture of these developments, I will be writing Elsie facts for each day of October.
Stay tuned!
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