COVER STORY
TURNING
CHALLENGES
INTO OPPORTUNITIES Iranian-Canadian Gina Cody has gone from becoming the first woman in Concordia’s history to earn a PhD in engineering to having the Faculty of Engineering and Computer Science at the university renamed in her honor By Vivien Fellegi
I
ran l969: It’s two am and 13-year-old Gina Cody is bent over her physics book, on a mission to perfection. She stifles a yawn as she wrestles with one problem after another. Beside her, Cody’s mother puts down her novel and cuts some apples to keep her daughter awake. She doesn’t understand Cody’s scribbles, but the woman who never completed high school prizes education above all else. Especially for her daughters. “Don’t worry if you’re staying up all night,” she’d say. “You (are) building the foundation for your future.” Her mother would know. The naturally “very strong” woman yearned to accomplish more than housework and encouraged her daughters to choose their own destinies. Cody’s father, a teacher, agreed. “My parents… measured their happiness by the mark I brought home,” she says. Her desire to please them stoked her own ambition. The young woman was a natural fit in the field of engineering. She had always been handy, fixing the family’s broken television and other damaged belongings. “It’s very satisfying,” she says. Her logical mindset would later help her pinpoint the reason for a building’s deficiency. “The minute I find the cause, I will find the solution,” says Cody. She enrolled at the Sharif University of Technology in Iran, graduating with a Bachelor of Science degree in structural engineering. Setting her sights on higher education, she came to Montreal on a student visa in 1979, to attend McGill University. There were some hurdles initially. Having lived her whole life in a loving home, the young foreigner struggled with solitude. Her precarious financial situation was another source of stress. The newcomer had come to Canada with a total of $2,000 in travellers’ cheques, but her tuition at
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CANADIAN IMMIGRANT Volume 17 Issue 5 | 2020
McGill cost twice that sum. “I was terrified,” she says. Then Cody had a stroke of luck. Her brother, a graduate of Concordia, arranged a meeting between his sister and his former engineering professor, Cedric Marsh. Impressed by her marks, Marsh offered the young student a full scholarship to study at his university. “He believed in me,” says Cody. But there were obstacles as well as opportunities in the engineering program. At first, Cody’s male colleagues excluded her from their study groups. “The notion was she’s not as good as I am,” says Cody. The frosty reception just spurred her on to try harder, and her stellar grades changed their tune. “Now they wanted to be my friend,” she says. Cody found love as well as learning at Concordia University. Smitten with the sharp and shapely Gina Cody, MBA student Thomas read up on Iran’s history and peppered her with questions about her homeland. “He (was) showing his interest in where I come from and who I am,” says Cody. They married in 1981, and their egalitarian partnership has helped them grow. He’s my biggest supporter,” says Cody. In 1989, Cody became the first woman in Concordia’s history to earn a PhD in engineering. After graduation, she moved to Toronto where she participated in writing the building code for the Ontario Ministry of Housing. A year later she joined a national consulting engineering firm, where she began inspecting cranes. There was no room for error. If just one nut was out of place, workers could tumble from the sky. “You (had) to be perfect,” says Cody. Especially women. In a male-dominated practice, a female’s mistake reinforces gender biases. “That is what they expect from you,” says Cody.
