Elsie MacGill , the first woman in Canada to receive a bachelor ' s degree in electrical engineering and a master ' s degree in aeronautical engineering . Oh , come on . the guy who wrote this article could have read a little further into the Queen of the Hurricanes . She was , barring contrary evidence that may exist but hasn ' t come forward , the world ' s first female aircraft designer , and oversaw the production of warplanes at Canada Car . She took the copilot ' s seat on all test flights , which sounds reasonableif bravebut get this She had fucking polio . Her legs were all fucked and she hobbled around on canes . That means , had any of her babies failed in their test flights , she couldn ' t have even crawled from the wreckage . They could have dropped her enormous balls on Japan . So , just saying she got some degrees is pretty lame . e I ' m a little invested in this . I wrote up a nomination for her within about an hour of the Mint opening the online submissions . It was a little hard to do , considering the character limits , but I took care to cram all the good info in there . She made the longlist and the shortlist , and I ' m glad to have played a role in that . Git ' em , Elsie !