The eastern maritime province of Nova Scotia is now in the process of following the lead of several other provinces in creating a holiday in the month of February. This would give a long weekend to provide a mid-winter break. The province will institute the holiday in 2015 but in the meantime they have been asking for suggestions on what to call the day.
Thanks to the power of American media, many people are aware of Rosa Parks, a black woman who in 1955 refused to give up her seat to a white passenger on an city bus and became a symbol for black civil rights in the US.
Canada Post issued a stamp in Viola Desmond’s honour in 2012
Years earlier however, in 1946, a black Canadian woman, Viola Desmond, refused to move from her whites only area in a Nova Scotia theatre. She was arrested, fined, and given a jail sentence.
A successful businesswoman, she lost a subsequent legal challenge to the judgement, but the public battle so embarrassed the province that it eventually repealed segregationist policies.
Desmond’s sister, Wanda Robson, 87, has written to a local member of the provincial assembly asking to introduce such a motion.
Robson says, although it was a single act, her sister’s defiance had important ramifications, “It’s influenced black people to stand up and say, I’m a human being and I won’t be treated this way”.
She adds that by naming the holiday after Viola Desmond, it may prompt people to research who she was and what her act achieved.
Ronald Caplan, publisher of Robson’s book, Sister to Courage: Stories From the World of Viola Desmond, Canada’s Rosa Parks, recently wrote to all 51 MLAs, lobbying to have the holiday named after Desmond.
Ms Desmond died in 1965. Her story was the basis for a National Film Board documentary in 2000 called Long Road to Justice.
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