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February is Black History Month in Canada. The 2022 theme, “February and Forever: Celebrating Black History today and every day” is about recognizing the daily contributions Black Canadians make in Canada.
Learn more about Black History Month by visiting canada.ca/en/canadian-heritage/campaigns/black-history-month.html.
Who was Viola Davis Desmond?
Viola Davis Desmond was a Black Nova Scotian. She was born in Halifax in 1914, one of 10 children of a mixed-race couple. She was aware of the lack of professional hair- and skin-care options for Black women, and decided to become a beautician to address this need.
The beauty schools in Halifax would not accept Desmond because of her race. She was forced to travel for training. She attended schools in Montreal, Atlantic City, NJ, and New York.
Desmond returned to Halifax as a trained beautician and opened Vi’s School of Beauty Culture. She started a line of beauty products and opened the Desmond School of Beauty Culture to provide the training for Black women that she had been denied. Women from Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Quebec travelled to attend the school, which also taught them the skills required to open and operate businesses of their own.
While on a business trip to Sydney, NS, Desmond’s car broke down in New Glasgow. It would take a while to repair, she was told, so she went to see a movie in a nearby theatre.
Desmond was unaware that Blacks were not supposed to sit on the main floor. Jim Crow laws enforced segregation in other places in the province at that time, but there was no such law for theatres. She was sold a balcony ticket for 30 cents, and paid tax of two cents. She wasn’t told that it was a balcony ticket, and she was nearsighted, so she made her way onto the main floor and sat near the front. When told she could not sit there, supposedly because she had purchased a balcony ticket, she asked to pay the extra 10 cents for a floor ticket.
She was refused. She was then arrested, violently removed from the theatre, and spent the night in jail. Desmond was convicted of tax evasion because the tax on a 40-cent floor ticket was three cents – she had deprived the government of its due of one cent. Her fine was $20.
Desmond’s husband wanted her to let it go. Instead, and with the help of other Black Nova Scotians, she fought the charge.
One of the people helping her was Carrie Best. Best and her son had also previously been arrested at the same New Glasgow theatre – and forced to pay damages to the owner. Best founded the first Black-owned Nova Scotian newspaper, and Desmond’s story was in the first edition.
Desmond lost. Her conviction was upheld. At no point did race come up in the trial arguments. The government maintained that the issue in dispute was tax evasion.
Her final appeal reached the Supreme Court of Nova Scotia and was dismissed. Desmond’s marriage ended. She closed her business and moved to New York, where she died in 1965 at the age of 50.
In 2010, the province of Nova Scotia officially apologized to Viola Desmond and pardoned her conviction. The ceremony was presided over by Mayann Francis, the first Black Lieutenant-Governor of Nova Scotia. Wanda Robson, Desmond’s 83-year-old sister, accepted the apology and pardon on her behalf.
In 2016, Desmond became the first Canadian woman to be featured on her own on a Canadian banknote. In 2018, she was named a National Historic Person. Numerous additional honours have cemented her legacy, and her story continues to inspire the fight for racial justice in Canada.
