Canada’s recently released $10 bill featuring civil rights activist Viola Desmond has been awarded the 2018 Bank Note of the Year Award from the International Bank Note Society (IBNS).
The IBNS selected the redesigned, vertically oriented bill out of 15 potential options released by governments across the world in 2018. The competition came from Mexico’s 500-peso note, Russia’s 100-ruble note, Norway’s 500-kroner note and China’s 50-yuan note, among many others. Switzerland’s new 200-franc note took second place in this year’s competition.
Canada’s $10 bill went into circulation in November and prominently features Desmond, the first woman other than Queen Elizabeth II to grace Canadian currency.
Desmond, who has been called the “Rosa Parks of Canada,” is known for defying the colour barrier at a New Glasgow, Nova Scotia movie theatre in 1946. She was a beautician and owner of Vi’s Studio of Beauty Culture, a Halifax beauty parlour serving the city’s black community. On November 8, 1946, while trying to see a movie at the Roseland Theatre, Desmond was told that, because she was black, she would only be allowed to sit in the balcony. The 32-year-old Desmond took a seat on the main floor of the theatre, refusing to bow to segregation. She was arrested at the theatre and spent the night in jail. The following day she was charged with attempting to defraud the provincial government and fined $26.
Months later, Desmond began her fight to have the charge reversed. Her case was taken as high as the Nova Scotia Supreme Court and, ultimately, her appeal was dismissed in 1947.
She died in 1965 at age 50.
A release from the IBNS says that the bill dominated the voting almost from the start, with the organization stressing the bill’s new vertical orientation and purple colour as its most striking features. Until the release of the $10 bill, no Canadian banknote had ever had a vertical design.
