Nattalia Lea’s grandfather emigrated to Canada from China in 1897. Lea became the first woman to graduate from the University of British Columbia with a bio-resources engineering degree in 1978, in an era when less than 0.5 percent of Canadian professional engineers were women. Her memoir captures the essence of being a female, visible minority engineer and how this working-class woman broke into the white, male engineering profession – with no mentors or role models. Photo courtesy of Jana Miko.
It was a shock to the University of British Columbia (UBC) Engineering Undergraduate Society that the first-year class of 1974 had 14 women. Up to then,…
