Today in 1946, Viola Desmond was dragged out of a movie theatre in New Glasgow, Nova Scotia, injuring her hip. She was charged by police after she refused to move from the main floor to the balcony where Black patrons sat. Her case sparked the modern Canadian civil rights movement.
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She was pardoned in 2010… 45 years after she passed away.
But Canadians aren’t racist. … my ass they aren’t.
Beautiful Shero 🩷
Been a while since I read about her, ~~but I believe her business license was also revoked by the city, ruining her livelihood in retaliation for sitting in the whites-only seats.~~
For what it’s worth, she’s now the face of our $10 bill.
Edit: I had it wrong; it’s actually more complicated and interesting than I realized. The town she was visiting, New Glasgow, had an **unofficial discriminatory policy** that reserved ground-floor seating at movie theatres for white people, a policy which Desmond’s hometown of Halifax did not have. The racist policy wasn’t posted anywhere (sort of a handshake agreement), so Desmond actually sat in the “wrong” part of the theatre by mistake — and was arrested. She refused to leave and was eventually dragged out.
While she spent the night in jail, the police decided to fine her $26. For what, you ask? Not for breaking segregationist laws — since, officially, there weren’t any segregationist laws. So this is where it gets weird. There was a one-cent difference in the *tax* on the price of white-seating tickets and Black-seating tickets. Since Desmond bought a Black-seating ticket (without realizing it) and sat in the whites-only area, she had failed to pay the tax on the more expensive ticket. **So the town fined her for tax evasion! For one cent!**
She took the movie theatre to court a couple of months later, lost the case, and was forever known, legally, as a tax evader. (For one cent’s difference in the price of a movie ticket, remember.)
Throughout the trial, the government insisted on making the case about tax evasion, and never raised the spectre of racist segregationist policy. Because they knew they would lose on those grounds. Since there was “officially” no discriminatory language built into any of these laws, they were able to have Desmond’s case dismissed. To be honest, I don’t fully understand this part of the story because it rests on what *type* of legal claims are made by both parties.
But in the end, the judge who dismissed Desmond’s case had this to say:
>Had the matter reached the court by some other method than *certiorari* there might have been an opportunity to right the wrong done this unfortunate woman. One wonders if the manager of the theatre who laid the complaint was so zealous because of a bona fide belief that there had been an attempt to defraud the province of Nova Scotia of the sum of one cent, or was it a surreptitious endeavour to enforce a Jim Crow rule by misuse of a public statute.
So even the judge knew this was all wack, but legally couldn’t rule in Desmond’s favour because of the way the case was being handled in court.
This is actually a great example of how “non-discriminatory laws” can be enforced unfairly against disadvantaged people to maintain the status quo. Remember, there was no law against Desmond sitting in the whites-only area. She was arrested for using her balcony-only ticket to sit on the main floor, then held in jail for the maximum allowable time without being charged, then fined $26 for a penny’s worth of tax evasion, and was finally clobbered in court by the government innocently enforcing its tax code. Nothing to see here! Move along, move along.
Viola Desmond ✊🏻
Not so fun fact, most vending machines in Canada still don’t accept the Viola Desmond $10 bill for some reason, which is kinda ironic. Maybe because it has a vertical pattern instead of the horizontal one. Then again, a simple firmware update should easily fix that right? I’ve tried it in multiple machines including the modern ones at work and at the airport self-serve kiosks and it gets rejected.
A true Canadian hero!
That definitely is a face of courage. My (American) mother remembers when she and my father were traveling through southern Canada in the late 70s that the U.S. travel guide had a warning for African American travelers about potential trouble for them in Nova Scotia and surrounding areas. Even as a white couple, they found it pretty disturbing to say the least.
Never knew Canada was segregationist, even if it was unofficial.
That said, she was sitting in a section she didn’t buy a ticket for. Did they refuse to sell her a main floor ticket?. Did they offer her the option of paying the difference in price to remain on the main floor?.
Any bets they were good Christians that dragged her out?
Good Christians that never considered that Jesus might not be lilly white with blue eyes?
Race bait
How did anyone even know she was Black? May be a stupid question but I googled her to see if maybe she looked different in a color pic and…I would not know she was Black.
When I met my bestie in grade six in 1982, he was freshly relocated from Nova Scotia to BC. A few times over the first decade we hung out I heard him use racist language about black people. It confounded me because in BC we didn’t generally talk like that and we didn’t have a lot of African-Canadians in our communities. He has since seen the error of his ways and has become one of the most empathetic people I know. But, I can confirm that Nova Scotia had a lot of racism upto and in the seventies.
Notice the passive language. Should be “a group of white canadians violently dragged her…”
I grew up in New Glasgow. The building this happened in is still standing. It’s apartments now but for a long time, well after it closed as a theatre it became a nightclub which kept the name Roseland.
The balconies were still there when it was a nightclub though they were essentially just decoration at that point. The theatre area (aka where she was but wasn’t allowed to be) was the dance floor/bar area.
Hero
Meanwhile, her Caucasian features are more prevalent than her Negro features
I’ll spend my ten bucks with pride. Don’t forget the tax!
Wow!
So…….
Canaduh, has a history of bigotry, racism and segregation. I thought that was only an American thing?
She ain’t got shit on Rosa Parks….
What a legend. I think if I was black and sent to the balcony there’d be spit bombs galore going on!
A friend of mine who grew up in New Glasgow, and eventually escaped that town, described the town as he knew in in the 1960’s:
**Even when I was a pre-teen (late 60’s), the balcony at that theatre was known as “n_gger heaven” and good, white families didn’t allow their children to sit up there — no matter how much we begged.**
**Down the street was the “Cozy Corner” diner where the tables at the front — in view of the street, were “reserved” you might say, and blacks were “expected” to sit in the back tables, away from the windows**
Who wants to live in a place like that, among people like that? Not my friend from New Glasgow. Certainly not me. We both left communities in which hatred was deeply woven into the social fabric; passed downed from generation to generation in a self-perpetuating cycle.
The people of New Glasgow did the right thing in absolving Viola Desmond of a crime … but only after waiting 63 years. They waited until a time when it cost them nothing; when it required no sacrifice. When it was convenient. *When it took no courage.* What’s that worth? Not much, in my book.
✊🏻