Roundup: Desmond’s deserving recognition

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The news was announced yesterday that Bill Morneau had chosen Canadian civil rights icon Viola Desmond to grace the new $10 banknote, which is being hailed pretty much universally as an excellent choice, and certainly the one that I had been hoping for when the shortlist was announced. As soon as it was announced, though, we got inundated with a flood of headlines declaring Desmond to be “Canada’s Rosa Parks,” which starts to grate because Desmond’s stand against segregation began nine years before Parks’ did, but she has largely been an unknown in Canadian history. I hadn’t even really heard of her until the History Minute last year (and side note, not only was it a compelling story, but I was pleased to see that Battlestar Galactica’s Kandyce McClure played her), and it was a reminder that yes, we too had segregation in Canada, albeit a subtler one because it wasn’t entrenched in legislation. That Canadians identify Parks before Desmond is part of our problem with our own history, both in that we have a tendency to whitewash much of it, but also that we are so inundated with Americana that our own achievements get lost in it (such as when Upper Canada was the first jurisdiction in the British Empire to end slavery). Of course, part of why Desmond’s case has been obscured in history has to do with the fact that her case was ostensibly one related to tax evasion (for the one cent theatre tax she did not pay to sit in the lower seats despite requesting to pay the higher priced ticket) and her lawyer didn’t push the racial discrimination angle in court. Hopefully, this inclusion will help to rectify this wrong, to restore Desmond’s rightful place in the history books and in the popular consciousness about civil rights in Canada.

Chatelaine has seven facts about Desmond. Former Nova Scotia lieutenant governor Maryann Francis talks about when she was able to give a Free Pardon posthumously for Desmond and the meaning of it for her. Maclean’s digs into its archives to look at Desmond and the issues of racism in Nova Scotia going back decades.

Meanwhile, there have been a few comments about how our wartime prime ministers, Sir Robert Borden and William Lyon Mackenzie King will no longer be gracing banknotes, while Sir John A Macdonald and Sir Wilfred Laurier are moving from the $5 and $10 banknotes to the $50 and $100, with accusations that this means that we’re somehow “effacing history.” The thing is, Borden and King are in plenty of other places in our history books, while a person like Desmond is not. I think we have room enough to learn about the contributions of more than just the great white men of history and making it more inclusive. That’s hardly effacing history – it’s opening it up.

Good reads:

  • The First Ministers meeting is today, and they’ll talk healthcare at a working dinner later. Indigenous leaders feel like they’re being sidelined in these climate talks.
  • US Vice-President Joe Biden is in town to meet with premiers and party leaders, and he’s urging Canada to be an international voice of reason.
  • After a legal analysis, the Senate has voted not to sue the seven former senators for expense repayments. That analysis punched some holes in the AG’s special audit.
  • Former Conservative MP Laurie Hawn explains that cutting CF-18 flying hours was a political decision to balance the budget. Gosh, you think?
  • After a procurement process that spanned three governments, the Airbus C-295W will be the new military search-and-rescue fixed-wing aircraft.
  • Federal refugee resettlement targets are dropping while the backlog continues to grow to the frustration of sponsors in Canada.
  • Rona Ambrose is calling on the government to park the electoral reform issue and focus on other things, like the economy, hopefully giving Trudeau a pass.
  • The academics behind the MyDemocracy survey are revealed, and they made a statement here. Monsef said that they will not use emails collected by the site.
  • Oh, and the government is – mystifyingly – suggesting that non-citizen residents also fill out MyDemocracy, for some reason.
  • A Quebec Algonquin group has filed a land claim for territory that includes Parliament Hill.
  • The Parliamentary Press Gallery has shrunk to 1994 levels thanks to turmoil in the industry.
  • Chantal Hébert talks about why you can’t just ignore French in the Conservative leadership race.

Odds and ends:

The National Post’s Tristin Hopper makes his own electoral reform survey, tongue firmly planted in cheek.

For iPolitics, I covered the Stornoway Press Gallery party.

4 thoughts on “Roundup: Desmond’s deserving recognition”

  1. There’s that Viola Davis typo again… was it the CBC or the Citizen that tweeted that yesterday?

  2. The Tristin Hopper DemocracyMine site is a riot… thanks for linking to it. Also funny, in parts, was the debate yesterday morning in the House to concur with the second report of the Special Committee on Electoral Reform. A vote will occur on Tuesday.

    The opposition parties might then consider asking the Government to release the questions and answers of the “secret survey” (my suggested term) that occurred before the MyDemocracy tool went live and on which it was based (see the Methodology tab on the MyDemocracy.ca site for details).

    Electoral reform will be the gift that keeps on giving for the opposition.

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