An account of Viola Desmond’s arrest in 1946 — from one who was there.

The Bank of Canada announced last week that Viola Desmond will be featured on the new $10 banknote, replacing Sir John A. Macdonald. Not exactly a household name, the choice is meant as both an act of historical reconciliation and education. It is welcome as both.

Who is on the currency is diminishing in importance as cash becomes well, less current, but it is not unimportant. Issuing currency is a state function, and thus traditionally it has been adorned (or disfigured) with the image of the head of state. The great Christian distinction between the allegiance owed to the imperium and that which is to be rendered unto God was illustrated precisely by reference to the image of Caesar on the coinage.

In Canada, the Queen is the personification of the state and so has graced our notes for 60 years. Adding prime ministers was a step backward, even with the estimable Macdonald and Sir Wilfrid Laurier ($5), as it is precisely the advantage of having a non-resident constitutional monarch that we avoid the exaltation of political office holders. The Americans, having violently abolished their monarchy and foolishly combined the offices of head of state and head of government, put their presidents on their bills, a small part of the imperial worship of the presidency that includes 40-car motorcades and a $4 billion order for new Air Force One jets. We are mistaken to imitate such American public worship, but we find it hard to resist.

So when the Americans announced back in April that Harriet Tubman — the slave-era heroine who served as a “Moses,” as she was called, to other slaves on the Underground Railroad — would replace Andrew Jackson on their $20 note, it was entirely predictable that the federal finance minister would boldly choose a black civil rights heroine as our first woman, aside from the Queen, on a banknote.

Viola Desmond is a good choice. Desmond was a Haligonian entrepreneur, opening a hair salon for black women, and a training school so that others could get in Halifax the training needed for that business. Entrepreneurs are an overlooked class of national heroes, but they are essential builders of society. On a business trip to New Glasgow in 1946, Desmond went to see a movie but refused to sit in the blacks-only balcony. She was arrested and kept overnight in jail, where she famously sat upright all night, a sign of both determination and dignity.

Desmond — in a bit of Al Caponesque prosecutorial creativity — was charged and convicted of tax evasion. She was sold a cheaper ticket for the balcony but, having insisted on sitting in the more expensive seating, she was guilty of defrauding the government of one cent of tax revenue, which was based on the ticket price. The experience of the trial soured Desmond on Nova Scotia, and after the trial she moved to Montreal and eventually New York City. She died in 1966 and is buried in Halifax. In 2010, she received a posthumous pardon from Nova Scotia and this past summer a new ferry was named after her.

When the new banknote is issued in 2018, various symbols will also be included. Perhaps there will be something of the hair salon/ barbershop that she operated with her husband, then as now an institution of both black business and culture. I hope too that there appears the Cornwallis Street Baptist Church. After returning to Halifax from New Glasgow, Desmond’s husband advised letting the matter drop. It was her church, and its famous minister, William Pearly Oliver, who persuaded her to fight the matter, and offered her the support and encouragement of the congregation to do so.

The key role of the Cornwallis Street Baptist Church is a reminder that without Christians convicted by their faith to engage in the political aspects of our common life, there would have been no abolitionist movement in Britain and no civil rights movement in the United States. The Canadian experience is not altogether different. Without the Reverend Oliver and his congregation, many of the institutions of liberation for black Nova Scotians would never have come to be, from the Nova Scotia Association for the Advancement of Coloured People to the Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission. Like Harriet Tubman, it was in the black church that Desmond found both spiritual and practical support for her struggle.

Desmond will not displace Sir John A entirely. He and Laurier will be kicked upstairs to the less used $50 and $100 notes, with a woman to be named later to take over Laurier’s place on the fiver. Sir Robert Borden ($100) and William Lyon Mackenzie King ($50) will be retired. The Queen, by the grace of God and consent of the Bank of Canada, will continue on the $20. The $100 bill is a rare enough to see now, but I will miss Borden who, after his First World War premiership went on to be chancellor of Queen’s University. But politics, even wartime politics, is not the most important thing, and Desmond will remind us of that.

POLITICS, EVEN WARTIME POLITICS, IS NOT THE MOST IMPORTANT THING.