A decade before Rosa Parks, Viola Desmond fueled the start of the Canadian Civil Rights Movement. This year, she has been chosen from over 26,000 submissions to the Bank of Canada to be shown on Canada’s new ten dollar bill. She will be the first Canadian woman and first black person on a Canadian bank note. The new bank note was revealed on March 8th, 2018 and will be in circulation by the end of the year.
Viola Desmond was born in 1914. After training in Montreal, Atlantic City, and New York, she became an entrepreneur by starting her own line of hair and skin products. Because few beauty schools accepted black women, she also opened a beauty school in Halifax for black women.
While on a business trip to Halifax, her car broke down in New Glasgow. While it was being repaired, she went to the local movie theater which was divided into a ‘white’ section on the main floor and a ‘black’ section in the balcony. Refused a floor seat, she was forced to buy a balcony ticket for one cent less - but she sat on the main floor anyway.
Soon after, the police arrived. “The policeman grasped my shoulders and the manager grabbed my legs. They carried me from the theater out onto the street,” recounted Viola Desmond. She was put in jail for 12 hour and charged with tax evasion for the one cent difference in ticket prices. She fought her case in court but in the end was convicted and fined twenty-six dollars (Canadian money).
This case, though, was not about tax evasion but about color. Because Viola Desmond was black, she could not sit on the main floor seats. And when she did anyways, she rebelled against segregation and fueled the Canadian Civil Rights Movement.
Viola Desmond died in 1965. In 2010, Nova Scotia pardoned her. And on March 8th, 2018, the new bank note was revealed. Her sister, Wanda Robson, who is in her nineties, was there when the bank note was revealed in Halifax. “It’s beyond what I ever thought,” Wanda Robson said. “It’s beautiful.”