Description: Viola Desmond is an important figure in Canadian Civil Rights Activism. Due to her actions in 1946, Nova Scotia, she sparked the Civil Rights Movement in Canada. Cape Breton University is creating a Chair for Social Justice in her name, and need your support to make it happen.
Viola Desmond was born in 1914 in Halifax, Nova Scotia. From an early age she dreamed of opening a beauty salon, but discovered that beauty schools in Nova Scotia did not accept black students. She persevered and trained in Montréal and the United States, then returned to run her own beauty school and salon as a successful entrepreneur in Nova Scotia.
In 1946, what started as a business trip for Viola turned into an act of social justice. At the Roseland Theatre in Nova Scotia, Viola stood up to racial segregation refusing to give up her seat in the lower section of the theatre which was ‘reserved’ for whites only. Viola was forcibly removed and jailed, sparking the civil rights movement in Canada.
Wanda Robson (left) and her sister Viola Desmond (right) at the Hi-Hat Club, Boston, 1955.