The face of change

In this ever-increasingly cashless society, there’s a compelling reason to go out, get a $10 bill — and frame it.

The new banknote, which became available on Monday, marks two firsts, both worthy of celebration.

It is the first regularly circulating Canadian banknote to feature the face of a woman, other than the Queen, and the first to feature a Black person. That person is none other than Viola Desmond. As readers will know by now, in 1946, almost a decade before Rosa Parks famously refused to move to the back of an Alabama bus, Desmond, a Nova Scotia beautician and cosmetics entrepreneur, took up a seat in the whites-only section of a movie theatre. She was forcibly removed by police, put in jail and eventually convicted of tax evasion — over the one penny difference in the price of tickets between the two theatre sections.

As Finance Minister Bill Morneau noted when he unveiled the bill last March, the deck was “doubly stacked” against Desmond because of her gender and the colour of her skin.

Recognizing and honouring Desmond is a step forward, but it shouldn’t be the last. Indeed, the government should be asking itself today: who’s next? After all, there’s a long way to go to right the balance in a country that has for too long implied, by the faces on its banknotes, that ours is a country forged only by white male politicians.

There is no better way, in fact, to honour Desmond’s legacy than to push for more notes representative of Canada’s heroes — in all their diversity.

Recognizing and honouring Desmond is a step forward, but it shouldn’t be the last