THUNDER BAY — From an early age, Elizabeth Wieben took to the skies, earning her pilots licence when she was just 17 and during a time when women aviators have far fewer opportunities than men.
But she would not let that keep her on the ground.
“Not just for my career, but for other people doing different things, they had to have a lot of resilience to go back and try again and try again in order to get where you were going,” Wieben said. “I am grateful for the help I received along the way.
Wieben was one of four women inducted into the City of Thunder Bay Archives Women’s History Month online exhibit this year.
Since 2013, the city archives have been celebrating Women’s History Month by highlighting the contributions of women in the community.
“It’s very important to highlight the accomplishments of women in the region. In the exhibit we get a lot of women from different walks of life, different professions, and women the general public would not have heard about,” said Christina Wakefield, a city associate archivist.
“It’s really important to acknowledge those women and the contributions they have made in our city and to our culture and the advancement of women in different workplaces.”
This year’s inductees joining Wieben include Dr. Penny Serafina Petrone, Mona Hardy, and Ruth Black.
City clerk Krista Power said she is excited to see these women added to this year’s exhibit.
“These Thunder Bay women are celebrated for their significant contributions to public service, health care, education, community development and the arts,” she said.
And while these contributions are still being felt today, getting to this point was not an easy road, as many of the women faced challenges and barriers along the way.
Wieben learned to fly in the late 1950s along with her four siblings with the help of their father, Orville Wieben, the owner of Superior Airways.
“When I needed to earn a living, I went to flying to do that,” Wieben said. “For 10 years we started a business, Wieben Air down in Pays Plat and flew Beaver and doing air charter mining work and lumber companies and tourists. That’s probably where I really cut my teeth bush flying day after day.”
Throughout her life, Wieben has lived and worked in Canada, Australia, and the United States and for more than 20 years taught aviation business and flying at Confederation College.
Wieben retired in 2005 and has four children. She recalls in the early days of her aviation career there were many challenges faced by women, including losing medical clearance to fly in the early stages of pregnancy or even getting up in the air in the first place.
“It wasn’t always easy as it is now for moms either,” she said. “But we got it all done and everybody has been successful in their own way. I think I’ve been privileged to do that but it was done in a time when the law didn’t necessarily protect you. You could be told that people didn’t hire women and they didn’t and there was no recourse to having that injustice rectified.”
Before being inducted, Wieben said it makes her feel more connected to the city.
“For me, it was the broader picture that these people’s lives matter because of what they did as a resident of the city,” she said.
“I think the importance of this is that it indicates, just like the suffragettes and so forth, it wasn’t always possible to do these things that people are doing now. A lot of people, men and women, but women in particular in my case, fought for these rights.”
The Women’s History Month exhibit can be found on the city archives website.
