Iconic woman with northwestern Ontario connection a finalist for next series of bank notes

Superior Morning10:18New Banknote - Elsie MacGill

She was known as the Queen of The Hurricanes. Elsie MacGill rose to fame working at the Can Car plant in Fort William during the Second World War.Now she's one of 12 women who could be on a new set of Canadian bank notes. Kelly Saxberg knows her story

A pioneering female aerospace engineer who rose to fame while workingin the city of Fort William (now Thunder Bay, Ont.) is one of a dozen women being considered by the Bank of Canada for a new series of bank notes.

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ElsieMacGillbecame known as the "Queen of the Hurricanes," while leading the effort to manufacture more than 1,000Hawker Hurricane airplanesat the Canadian Car and Foundry plant in Fort William during the Second World War.

For Thunder BayfilmmakerKellySaxberg,MacGillis an obvious choice to grace Canadian currency.

"I can't imagine anyone more deserving," saidSaxberg,who chronicledMacGill'sstory in her 1999 documentary filmRosiesof the North.

"It's thrilling."

A symbol of wartime effort

ElsieMacGillwas born in B.C. and became the first woman to graduate with an electrical engineering degree from the University of Toronto.

She went on to become the first woman to earn a master's degree in aeronautical engineeringand to rise to the top of her male-dominated field.

During her time at the Canadian Car plant, MacGill became a symbol of the wartime effortand was even featured in a comic book in 1942.

After the war, MacGillbecame a leading activist for women's rights in Canada, and was named to the Royal Commission on the Status of Women in the 1960s.

MacGill died in 1980.