Mixed Race Studies

Viola Desmond: Her Life and Times

Roseway Publishing (an imprint of Fernwood Publishing)
October 2018
128 pages
Paperback ISBN: 9781773631233
Kindle ISBN: 9781773631257
ePub ISBN: 9781773631240

Graham Reynolds, Professor Emeritus and the Viola Desmond Chair in Social Justice
Cape Breton University, Sydney, Nova Scotia, Canada

with Wanda Robson

Teacher’s Guide for Viola Desmond: Her Life and Times

Many Canadians know that Viola Desmond is the first Black, non-royal woman to be featured on Canadian currency. But fewer know the details of Viola Desmond’s life and legacy. In 1946, Desmond was arrested for refusing to give up her seat in a whites-only section of a movie theatre in New Glasgow, Nova Scotia. Her singular act of courage was a catalyst in the struggle for racial equality that eventually ended segregation in Nova Scotia.

Authors Graham Reynolds and Wanda Robson (Viola’s sister) look beyond the theatre incident and provide new insights into her life. They detail not only her act of courage in resisting the practice of racial segregation in Canada, but also her extraordinary achievement as a pioneer African Canadian businesswoman. In spite of the widespread racial barriers that existed in Canada during most of the twentieth century, Viola Desmond became the pre-eminent Black beauty culturist in Canada, establishing the first Black beauty studio in Halifax and the Desmond School of Beauty Culture. She also created her own line of beauty products.

Accessible, concise and timely, this book tells the incredible, important story of Viola Desmond, considered by many to be Canada’s Rosa Parks.

Viola Desmond $10 bill wins international banknote of the year design award

CBC News
2019-04-30

Cassie Williams, Reporter/Editor

In March 2018, the federal government unveiled the vertical banknote design featuring Desmond’s portrait and a map of her north-end Halifax neighbourhood. The bill went into circulation in November. (Bank of Canada)

Canadian banknote tops designs from Switzerland, Norway, Russia, Solomon Islands

A Canadian $10 bill featuring Nova Scotia civil rights pioneer Viola Desmond has been named the best in the world.

The International Bank Note Society has announced the Desmond bill won the coveted Bank Note of the Year Award for 2018, beating out top designs from places like Switzerland, Norway, Russia and the Solomon Islands.

In March 2018, the federal government unveiled the vertical banknote design featuring Desmond’s portrait and a map of her north-end Halifax neighbourhood. The bill went into circulation in November.

Desmond played a seminal role in Canada’s civil rights movement when, on Nov. 8, 1946, she went to see a movie at the Roseland Theatre in New Glasgow, N.S., while her car was getting fixed.

Desmond, 32, was dragged out of the theatre by police and jailed for defiantly sitting in the “whites only” section of the film house. At the time, black people could only sit in the balcony.

Her ensuing legal fight against that injustice helped end segregation in Nova Scotia. In 2010, she was posthumously awarded an apology and a pardon…

Read the entire article here.

New $10 bill featuring Viola Desmond goes into circulation next week

CP24
2018-11-12

Alex Cooke, Reporter
The Canadian Press

HALIFAX — A new $10 banknote featuring Viola Desmond’s portrait will go into circulation in a week, just over 72 years after she was ousted from the whites-only section of a movie theatre in New Glasgow, N.S.

The civil rights pioneer and businesswoman is the first Canadian woman to be featured on a regularly circulating banknote, which will also show a map of Halifax’s historic north end, home to one of Canada’s oldest black communities and the site where Desmond opened her first salon.

Irvine Carvery, a prominent member of Halifax’s north end and a former school board chair, said he’s excited that the bill will pay tribute to her, describing the inclusion of a black woman on the note as “a historic moment.”…

Read the entire article here.

A Black Woman Who Defied Segregation in Canada Will Appear on Its Currency

The New York Times
2018-03-12

Ian Austen

Canada’s finance minister, Bill Morneau, right, with Wanda Robson in Gatineau, Quebec, last year, after an image of her sister Viola Desmond was chosen to be featured on a new $10 bank note. Chris Wattie/Reuters

OTTAWA — Nine years before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a Jim Crow-era bus in Montgomery, Ala., Viola Desmond tried to sit in a whites-only section of a movie theater in New Glasgow, Nova Scotia.

Ms. Desmond, a businesswoman who had her own line of cosmetics and who died in 1965, was prosecuted for trying to defraud the provincial government of 1 cent — the difference in sales tax for a seat in the balcony, where blacks were expected to sit and the whites-only ground floor ticket price. While she offered to pay the tax, she was convicted and fined 26 Canadian dollars, including court costs, at a trial at which the theater owner acted as the prosecutor and she was without a lawyer.

Now she is about to become the first black person — and the first woman other than a British royal — to appear alone on Canadian currency. The new series of $10 bills is to be released this year…

A conceptual image of the front of the new Canadian bank note featuring a portrait of Viola Desmond. Bank of Canada

Read the entire article here.

New $10 bill starring Nova Scotian will debut in Halifax next week

CBC News
Nova Scotia
2018-03-02

Wanda Robson, the sister of Viola Desmond, smiles as it is announced during a ceremony in 2016 that her sister will be featured on Canadian currency. (Canadian Press)

Viola Desmond’s banknote will be unveiled at Halifax Central Library on Thursday

Canadians will get their first peek at the new $10 bill featuring civil rights pioneer Viola Desmond at an event in Halifax next week.

The banknote will be unveiled Thursday at the Halifax Central Library by federal Finance Minister Bill Morneau and Bank of Canada governor Stephen Poloz…

Read the entire article here.

Viola Desmond, the new face of the $10 bill, ‘represents courage’

The Globe and Mail
2016-12-09

Laura Stone

Viola Desmond, shown in this undated handout image provided by Communications Nova Scotia, often described as Canada’s Rosa Parks for her 1946 decision to sit in a whites-only section of a Nova Scotia movie theatre, will be the first woman to be celebrated on the face of a Canadian banknote.

Viola Desmond just wanted to watch a movie.

The year was 1946 and the movie was The Dark Mirror, a psychological thriller starring Olivia de Havilland. Ms. Desmond, a beauty-school owner from Halifax, was temporarily stranded in New Glasgow, N.S., after some car trouble. She hadn’t been to the movies in years, probably not since Gone with the Wind came out in 1939.

So, she walked to a nearby theatre, bought a ticket and sat in the front – a better view for the petite woman with poor eyesight.

There was only one problem: She was black…

Read the entire article here.