Viola Desmond's Little Sister

In the early 2000s, at Cape Breton University, a student in her seventies took a course on race relations. Her name was Wanda Robson.

One day, Professor Graham Reynolds brought up a 1946 court case. The case of Viola Desmond.

Wanda spoke up. Viola was her big sister.

That day, a long effort began: to finally tell her story.

On November 8, 1946, Viola Desmond stopped in New Glasgow, Nova Scotia. She was a beautician. She ran a beauty school that trained young Black women.

That evening, she went into the Roseland Theatre. She asked for a main-floor seat. She was sold a ticket for the balcony, generally reserved for non-white customers.

She sat on the main floor. She was forcibly removed. She spent twelve hours in jail.

She was charged with defrauding the province of one cent: the tax difference between the two seats. The judge fined her $26.

Viola Desmond died in 1965, in New York.

Her little sister did not forget. With Professor Reynolds, she wrote books. Together, they worked with the government to clear Viola's name.

On April 15, 2010, in Halifax, Lieutenant Governor Mayann Francis granted Viola Desmond a free pardon. It was the first posthumous pardon of its kind in Canada. Premier Darrell Dexter also apologized.

Wanda was 83. She was there.

On November 19, 2018, Viola's face appeared on the new $10 bill. At the launch, at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights in Winnipeg, Wanda used the first bill to buy a copy of the book she co-wrote with Graham Reynolds.

In 2021, the province repaid the 1946 fine to her, as an adjusted sum: $1,000. Wanda used it to create a scholarship at Cape Breton University.

She died in February 2022, at 95.

A story can sleep for a long time. Sometimes one voice is enough to wake it.

Wanda Robson knew who she was passing the torch to:

One sister carried the other's name for decades. That is how memory travels, from hand to hand, all the way to the youngest.