Viola Desmond chosen for new $10 bill
Civil rights pioneer will be first Canadian woman on currency
It had been some time since Viola Desmond last visited the cinema.
The hairdresser and entrepreneur opted to sit close to the front of the theatre; her poor eyesight made it difficult to see from the balcony, the section where black people were expected to sit in those days.
“She wanted to see a movie,” Wanda Robson, 89, said Thursday as she recalled the historic day in 1946 when her older sister chose to defy the rules and sit in the Nova Scotia theatre’s “whites-only” section.
Given all that followed, Robson said, Desmond would have been honoured to see herself on the $10 bill — a tribute that will make its debut in 2018 when she becomes the first Canadian woman to be celebrated on the face of her country’s currency.
“Viola Desmond’s own story reminds all of us that big change can start with moment of dignity and bravery,” Finance Minister Bill Morneau said as he unveiled the choice during a news conference in Gatineau, Que.
Desmond is often described as the Canadian version of Rosa Parks, although her act of defiance and subsequent arrest took place much earlier and in a much more spontaneous way than the historic 1955 events of Montgomery, Ala.
She had found herself with some rare time off from her business running a barbershop and hairdressing salon with her husband, and decided to catch a movie at what turned out to be a racially segregated theatre in New Glasgow, N.S.
“She said, ‘I stretched out and I was just getting comfortable, and I thought, “Oh, this is nice, and I won’t worry about anything,”’ and then this usher came up and told her she couldn’t sit there,” Robson said in an interview.
Desmond was arrested and fined. Her decision to fight the charges in court inspired later generations of black people in Nova Scotia and the rest of Canada. The Nova Scotia government granted her a posthumous pardon in 2010.
Isaac Saney, a senior instructor of black studies at Dalhousie University in Halifax, hopes Canadians will come to learn that their country’s history includes dark chapters about colonialism, slavery and institutionalized racism.
“It’s a very positive thing in terms of honouring someone who was a trailblazer, and until recently was forgotten within the Canadian struggle for human rights,” Saney said of the decision to honour Desmond.
Thursday’s short list included poet E. Pauline Johnson; 1927 University of Toronto electrical engineering graduate Elsie MacGill; Quebec suffragette Idola SaintJean; and 1928 Olympic track and field medallist Fanny Rosenfeld.