Pioneering
Professional
Women

by Timothy Paleczny

It wasn’t common in the 1930's for women to obtain a post-secondary education and pursue a professional career such as that of a marine biologist.

Yet, Ardis Lowney, the protagonist of A Life on Water, graduates as a marine biologist and pursues her passion to study sea turtles.

Were my protagonist’s ambitions ahead of her time? Were her accomplishments plausible?

I needed to show my readers how my protagonist was inspired by actual women in the 1930s.

In A Life on Water, Ardis’s ambition to pursue post-secondary education is unusual. Her father doesn’t understand why she needs so much education.

Ardis’s mother encourages her daughter by sharing Chatelaine magazine articles on aircraft engineering by Elsie MacGill, a then-recent electrical engineering graduate of the University of Toronto.

Elsie MacGill

In 1929, Elsie had become the first woman aeronautical engineer in the world when she completed her aeronautical engineering degree. Elsie went on to co-manage the factory in Thunder Bay, Ontario that produced the Hawker Hurricane, one of the main fighters flown by Canadian and Allied airmen in the Battle of Britain.

How does Ardis acquire the confidence to pursue her studies in marine biology?

In the mid-1930s, Ardis travels with her family to New Jersey where she hears a radio program, Romance Under the Waters, the creation of marine biologist Rachel Carson, who, at that time, was employed by the US Bureau of Fisheries.

Rachel Carson

Rachel Carson went on to publish Silent Spring (1962) that alerted the world to the risks associated with DDT. Her book led to a ban on DDT and other pesticides and led also to the creation of the US Environmental Protection Agency.