Desmond, 32 at the time, went to see a movie at the Roseland Theatre to pass the time while her car was being repaired. Because she is shortsighted, she could not see clearly from the balcony seats where black patrons were told to be seated.
Black rights activist Viola Desmond will be the first Canadian woman to be featured on a bank note! ($10 bill starting 2018)👏🇨🇦 pic.twitter.com/GDT9i93MUe
— Norm Kelly (@norm) December 8, 2016
When the cashier refused to sell Desmond a floor seat, she bought a balcony seat but nevertheless sat in the whites-only section in the floor area. She refused to move after theater staff called police and, as a result, was arrested and spent the night in jail.
Desmond was officially pardoned only in 2010, 35 years after her death, by the region's black female lieutenant governor.
Sunday Miller, executive director of the Africville Heritage Trust in Halifax, praised the decision to honor Desmond.
"History, you can't change," Miller said. "But sometimes you have to recognize that the things that were done weren't right, and then you have to try and right them."
Desmond is the first woman of color to get her own Heritage Minute (a short film illustrating an important moment in Canadian history), which was played at a Thursday event announcing the new banknote.
