The publication of Viola Desmond: Her Life and Times coincides with the release of the newly designed $10 bill featuring Viola Desmond as the first Canadian-born woman to be solely represented on our national currency. For some Canadians, this new $10 bill may be their first introduction to this historically important African-Canadian woman. Others know Viola Desmond as the Halifax Black businesswoman who defiantly refused to leave her seat in a “white only” section of the Roseland Theatre in New Glasgow, Nova Scotia. For the vast majority of Canadians, little more is known about Viola’s life and her extraordinary achievement both as a woman of courage and pioneer Black businesswoman.
Viola Desmond was a remarkable woman. She lived during a time when racial discrimination touched nearly every aspect of the lives of Black Canadians—in education, housing and employment. Viola, however, overcame many of these colour barriers and pursued her dream of becoming a beautician. She established the first beauty salon for Black women in Halifax and later founded the Desmond School of Beauty Culture, the first of its kind for Black women in Canada. Viola also developed her own line of beauty products. She was, in many respects, a woman well ahead of her time and she personified an image of self-confidence, respectability and independence.
Viola’s strength of character was put to the test in November 1946, when she was refused a ticket to sit in the “white only” section of the Roseland Theatre. Like Rosa Parks, who refused to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, Viola realized the injustice confronting her and instead of conforming to the theatre’s policy of racial segregation, she took deliberate and defiant action, first by taking her seat and then by refusing to give it up. This proved to be a life-changing decision for her and it ultimately would have lasting historical significance.
Although Viola happened by chance to enter the Roseland Theatre on that fateful day, her action was, in many respects, a protest waiting to happen and the consequence of the time in which she lived and almost everything else that made her who she was. As readers will discover in the following pages, Viola’s character and moral grounding were shaped by her deep connection to the Black community in the North End of Halifax and her strong family ties, especially her relationship with her mother, Gwendolyn, and her father, James.
Viola’s action at the Roseland Theatre challenged the existing pattern of conformity to the practice of racial segregation and eventually helped forge a new consensus of racial equality and a culture of rights in Canada. In his book, Human Rights in Canada: A History, Dominique Clement has observed that human rights are not solely abstractions of law, but they are products of history and social dialogue. The fact that Viola Desmond’s story has now re-emerged into the Canadian public consciousness in the second decade of the 21st century, over sixty years after the Roseland Theatre incident, is testimony to this process and to the unique manner human rights and social justice have evolved in Canada.