Viola Desmond, 'Canada's Rosa Parks', to appear on banknote

A black woman often described as Canada's Rosa Parks for her 1946 decision to sit in a whites-only section of a Nova Scotia cinema will be the first Canadian woman to be celebrated on the face of a Canadian banknote.

Viola Desmond, 'Canada's Rosa Parks', to appear on banknote

A black woman often described as Canada's Rosa Parks for her 1946 decision to sit in a whites-only section of a Nova Scotia cinema will be the first Canadian woman to be celebrated on the face of a Canadian banknote.

Viola Desmond will grace the front of the 10 dollar bill when the next series goes into circulation in 2018, finance minister Bill Morneau said.

A businesswoman-turned-civil libertarian, Desmond built a business as a beautician and mentored young black women in Nova Scotia.

It was in 1946 that she rejected racial discrimination by sitting in a whites-only section of a New Glasgow cinema.

She was arrested and fined.

Her actions inspired later generations of black people in Nova Scotia and the rest of Canada.

AP

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