Money talks, but more needs to be said

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This article was published 08/03/2018 (2926 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

As of today, Viola Desmond is the newly minted face on our money.

The much-discussed new $10 bill featuring the portrait of Ms. Desmond, a Nova Scotian civil rights champion and businesswoman, will be unveiled today — International Women’s Day — by the Bank of Canada at the Halifax Central Library. Ms. Desmond will be the first Canadian woman to grace the front of a regularly circulating Canadian banknote. 

The new bill, which will be in circulation later this year, is the result of the 2016’s #bankNOTEable campaign, during which Canadians were asked to nominate prominent, accomplished Canadian women, mostly from history. Living women were not eligible. 

Other finalists included poet E. Pauline Johnson, Quebec suffragette Idola Saint-Jean, 1928 Olympic track and field gold medallist Fanny Rosenfeld, and the first woman to earn a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering, Elsie MacGill.

Of course, there’s rich irony in making women, yet again, compete for one available spot. But, Ms. Desmond is certainly deserving of her place on the $10 bill. In 1945, she refused to give up her seat in a whites-only section of a movie theatre in New Glasgow, N.S. She was forcibly removed and jailed overnight. She subsequently launched the first known legal challenge against racial segregation brought forth by a black woman in Canada.

When it was announced Ms. Desmond’s portrait would be replacing Sir John A. Macdonald’s — which has been on the $10 note since 1971 — there were many complaints, just as there were in the U.S. when it was announced that abolitionist Harriet Tubman would be replacing former president Andrew Jackson on that country’s $20 bill. 

Some objected to the Canadian banknote change because they believed it was disrespectful to the former prime minister; some felt threatened, perhaps fearing that having a woman’s face on money might set things on a slippery slope toward equal pay. 

To that end, Ms. Desmond’s presence on the $10 banknote isn’t a panacea for the inequality that too many Canadian women still face. Yes, it’s a symbolic gesture — but it’s a symbol of the pursuit of equality. It is a symbol of how much representation matters. So many of our institutions are named after men; we have monuments and holidays and rural municipalities named after men.

For our nation’s little girls, being exposed to the names and faces of pioneering Canadian women is important. And hearing their stories is even more so.

Through this exercise, the name Viola Desmond is starting to get the profile it deserves. The public is more familiar with her story. And the promise of her image having a constant presence in our wallets has sparked conversations about other great Canadian females who blazed trails and tore down obstacles so that the women who followed in their footsteps would be able to build on the trailblazers’ early successes — women such as Jennie Trout, the first female physician in Canada. And Nellie McClung, who was instrumental in securing the vote for Manitoba’s women. And Lucy Maud Montgomery, who created one of the most inspiring and beloved little girls in literature.  

These are women whose accomplishments need to be highlighted, and not just on International Women’s Day. An Ipsos survey, conducted on behalf of Historica Canada, found that only 16 per cent of respondents had even heard of McClung.

Perceptions need to change. What Canadians know about the inspiring women who helped shape our history needs to change. And it will take a lot more than $10 worth of inspiration to make it happen.