VIOLA DESMOND ON $10 BILL!

Local Gottingen Street merchant and civil rights activist Viola Desmond will be featured on Canada's new $10 bill! This will be the first time a portrait of a woman will be on regular circulating bank note in this country, and she is from the North End! Exciting news for the African Nova Scotian community, women, and the North End!

This is also an important opportunity to remember why Viola Desmond is being recognized. Desmond was an early pioneer of the civil rights movement. In 1946 at the age 19 she was jailed in New Glasgow when she refused to leave a whites-only section of a movie theatre. She was eventually posthumously pardoned in 2010 (a first in Canada) by the province of Nova Scotia and it was acknowledged she was rightfully resisting racial discrimination. Special congratulations to Viola Desmond's family, especially her sister Mrs. Robson.