These Are The Black Canadians On Our Currency & Each Of Them Has An Amazing Story

Viola Desmond

Viola Desmond got the honour of being the first Black Canadian to ever grace Canadian currency after her face was featured on the $10 vertical bills in 2018.

But what was her story?

Per the Bank of Canada, Desmond gained prominence as a civil rights activist for Black Canadians in the 1940s.

On November 8, 1946, Desmond walked into a New Glasgow movie theatre that only allowed Black people to sit in one section, the balcony. At first unaware, she was eventually told she wasn't allowed to sit in her preferred section of the theatre, the downstairs seats.

In protest of the restriction, she took a seat in the downstairs section, which lead to a confrontation with the theatre manager and ended with the police being called.

Eventually, Desmond was convicted of "tax evasion" — as there was a one-penny tax difference between the two sections — as a way to couch the case away from racial discrimination.

Her defiance of the racist policy and the resulting court case became a rallying cry for the Black community in Nova Scotia and helped bring more awareness to racial discrimination.

Apart from being an icon of the modern civil rights movement in Canada, Viola Desmond is also known for being an entrepreneur, having opened her own hair salon in Halifax and then starting her own beauty school as well.

Desmond left Nova Scotia and eventually died in New York City at the age of 50. She was posthumously pardoned in 2010, and the then-premier of Nova Scotia called the conviction a "miscarriage of justice."

Oscar Peterson

In 2022, the Royal Canadian Mint issued a special loonie in regular circulation that paid tribute to Canadian jazz legend Oscar Peterson.

The coin features Peterson playing his instrument of choice, the piano, and has a flourish of purple — the musician's favourite colour.

According to the Canadian Music Hall of Fame, Peterson was born on August 15, 1925, in Montreal, Quebec. Starting in high school, Peterson had a knack for music right away.

When he was 14 years old, he won a CBC national music competition and recorded his first album five years after that.

Soon he was collaborating with fellow jazz legends Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Dizzy Gillespie and many more.

His song Hymn To Freedom even became an anthem for Dr. Martin Luther King's civil rights movement in the United States!

Peterson passed away on December 23, 2007, after being awarded countless national and international prizes and leaving a massive body of jazz standards that are still played today.

The No. 2 Construction Battalion

This $20 silver commemorative coin is not in regular circulation but it was put out by the Royal Canadian Mint in honour of Black History Month 2023, and definitely deserves a mention.

The coin honours the largest all-Black military battalion in Canadian history which operated between 1916 and 1920.

It depicts several Black soldiers marching, one standing at attention, a lumber camp and a railway, with the inverse having Queen Elizabeth II's profile on it.

The battalion was active during the First World War and helped the war effort by assisting the Canadian Forestry Corps in lumber operations in France.

Unlike the other pieces of currency featured, this is a collector's item and can be bought from the Mint for $99.95.