Viola Desmond to be honoured on $10 bill

Reports the CBC this morning (December 8, 2o16): Black rights activist Viola Desmond will be the first Canadian woman to be featured on an $10 bill, beginning in 2018. Finance Minister Bill Morneau and Bank of Canada governor Stephen Poloz announced the selection of the beautician and businesswoman, who is best known for her refusal to accept racial segregation in a Nova Scotia movie […]

Viola Desmond Day? It’s time…

Will this be one more missed opportunity? The new Liberal government last week introduced the February Holiday Act to establish an annual mid-winter break on the third Monday of February, beginning in 2015. “The new holiday will give people time to spend with their families and friends, just as the majority of Canadians already do,” […]

Why can’t we have Viola Desmond day and…?

As Canada Post prepares issue a new stamp next month to celebrate the life of Viola Desmond, our own government seems about to quietly take a pass on the opportunity to honour the Halifax woman whose personal courage remains a symbolic inspiration in the fight for human rights in Canada. In 1946—nine years before Rosa […]

Past time for Nova Scotians to honour Viola Desmond

Damn. Missed it. Again. I’m not the only one. Which is unfortunate. For everyone. Last Sunday marked the anniversary of an event that symbolizes—or should—the beginning of the modern civil rights movement in Canada. On November 8, 1946, a 32-year-old black beautician named Viola Desmond was driving from Halifax to Sydney when her car broke […]

Still no Desmond Day… or any day to honour African Nova Scotians

Another February. Another African Heritage Month. Another plaintive plea—from me and a few lonely others—for an official day to honour Viola Desmond’s contribution to the human rights movement in Canada. On Nov. 8, 1946, Desmond, a pioneering black businesswoman from Halifax, found herself stuck in New Glasgow overnight. She decided to see a movie. The […]

What to do about Justin?

Last week’s Blackface/Brownface controversy raises the complicated question of how we navigate our way through all the competing, compelling, often contradictory private and public actions of our politicians to determine who — if anyone — deserves our vote. Voting is easy. Choosing who to vote for? Not so much… In our federal parliamentary, first-past-the-post system, […]

Race in Nova Scotia: one small step forward, another giant leap into the past

Back in the fall of 1968, Stokely Carmichael’s mere presence scared the hell out of Halifax. Are there lessons for today? The column first appeared in the HalifaxExaminer December 3, 2018. Last month, the Bank of Canada released its new $10-banknote featuring an image of Viola Desmond, the iconic Canadian civil rights pioneer who refused to give […]

Name? Un-name? How about no name?

Last Wednesday in Morning File, Tim Bousquet went on a rant. “Stop it,” he wrote. “Stop naming shit after people who are still alive.” The specific object of Tim’s ire that morning was not immediately apparent among the story’s cascading collection of photos of local edifices named after the alive and hopefully well (not […]

Racism’s crime: ‘devaluing of self and others’

Where to begin? With the too-soon deaths of three young black men murdered in separate incidents within a week last month? Or with last Monday’s announcement the provincial government is restructuring — which is to say eliminating — a community-based program in North and East Preston, Cherry Brook and Lake Loon that had been helping […]

Nova Scotia’s something-for-everyone holiday a cowardly copout

It began with a January phone call from a school principal, inviting Wanda and Joe Robson to travel from their home in Cape Breton to metro to attend a Feb. 17 unveiling of a portrait honouring Wanda’s sister, Viola Desmond. Desmond — who was convicted for sitting in the whites-only section of a New Glasgow […]