Why not two?

If we learned anything from International Women’s Day on Tuesday it was this: The goal of gender parity is a long way off, whether it involves wages, boardrooms or housework.

What an unhappy coincidence, then, that on a day dedicated to gender parity, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau would make his big announcement for International Women’s Day: At last, starting in 2018, a Canadian woman’s face will grace the front of a bank note. Just one? What happened to Trudeau’s famous “Because it’s 2015” commitment to gender parity? Why not two bank notes featuring “iconic” Canadian women? After all, there are four bills up for grabs — the $5, $10, $50 and $100 — if you suppose that the Queen will maintain her place on the $20 note.

Shouldn’t there be gender parity on bank notes, too? Shouldn’t Canadian women get the “billing” they deserve in place of two, not just one, of the current faces on Canadian currency: John A. Macdonald, Wilfrid Laurier, Robert Borden and William Lyon Mackenzie King?

There isn’t exactly a shortage of notable Canadian women to pick from. There are 300 suggestions alone on the website WomenOnCanadianBankNotes.ca, which has been petitioning the government since 2013 for a female face to grace a Canadian bill. (The website garnered more than 73,000 names on a petition fighting for the cause.) Women whose names are commonly mentioned, all of whom would make fine choices, include Canada’s first female MP Agnes Macphail; feminist, suffragette and author Nellie McClung; Mohawk poet Pauline Johnson; painter Emily Carr; Canada’s first female physician, Jennie Trout; 1812 heroine Laura Secord; and authors Margaret Laurence and Gabrielle Roy.

Women (aside from monarchs) have been denied a place on the front of Canadian currency going all the way back to Confederation almost a century and a half ago. Indeed, even when Alberta’s “Famous Five” women and Senator Thérèse Forget Casgrain made it to the back of the $50 bill, they were knocked off in 2012 in favour of an image of — wait for it — a coast guard vessel.

It’s time Canadian women got the recognition they deserve on Canada’s currency. After all, money talks.

Women have been denied a place on the front of Canadian currency going all the way back to Confederation almost a century and a half ago