Canadian Minister of Finance Bill Morneau announced Thursday that the nation will put civil rights icon Viola Desmond on its new $10 bill. Desmond is the first Canadian woman to be featured on the nation's bank notes.
A black Nova Scotian, Desmond refused to leave the whites-only section of a movie theater in 1946, an event that helped spark the Canadian civil rights movement. The incident occurred nine years before U.S. civil rights activist Rosa Parks made a similar statement on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama.
Morneau said in his announcement that Desmond's story "will remind all of us, and future generations, that big change can start with small moments of dignity and bravery."
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