Viola Desmond was born in Halifax in 1914. She became a beautician after training in Montreal which she had to do because as a woman of African descent she was not allowed to train in Halifax. She designed a line hair and skin care products for black women. She opened a hair salon and later The Desmond School of Beauty Culture so that black women would not have to travel as far as they previously had to receive proper training. Catering to women from Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Quebec. Students were provided with the skills required to open their own businesses and provide jobs for other black women within their communities. Each year as many as fifteen women graduated from the school, all of whom had been denied admission to whites-only training schools.

In 1946 she went into a theatre in New Glasgow, Nova Scotia to pass time as she waited for her car to get fixed. She bought a ticket which was for the balcony but because she was nearsighted, she decided to sit closer to the screen in the floor section. There were no segregation laws for movie theatres in Nova Scotia at the time but these discriminatory practices were allowed in all Canadian provinces.

Desmond wasn’t aware the floor seats were reserved for whites only but realized it when she asked to move. She refused. The floor seat tickets were more expensive, so when she was made aware she asked to exchange her ticket for a floor seat ticket and to pay the difference.

She was refused, dragged out of the theatre so forcibly that it caused a hip injury. She was then charged with tax evasion and held in jail for 12 hours. She was subsequently found guilty and fined $25.

In 2010 she was the first person in Canada to be granted a free pardon. A free pardon means she was deemed to have never committed the offence for which she was convicted. On March 18, 2018, at a ceremony in Halifax Nova Scotia, the $10 banknote on which she appears was unveiled.

Viola died at the age of 50, in 1965 in New York City.

“Justice in Canada is when every First Nations child doesn’t go to bed hungry, or with self-loathing, or without heating or without water or without a healthy environment because at the core of our teachings, our communities, our traditions is our children. Our children are our very motivation, our futures. And our children deserve everything.”

Nahanni Fontaine’s voice is recognized throughout Canada – and the world – on matters of social justice for Indigenous Peoples.  Instrumental in organizing Canada’s 2nd National Roundtable on Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women, Girls and Two-Spirit (MMIWG2S), Nahanni has organized Provincial and National Gatherings for MMIWG2S families, alongside, National Justice Practitioners Gathering. Nahanni has spoken around the world on the epidemic violence against Indigenous women, girls and two-spirited.

On March 10, 2021, Nahanni Fontaine was removed from the House for the rest of the day for saying the Progressive Conservatives “just don’t give a crap” about missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls, and two-spirit people

Nahanni is also the first Indigenous woman to be House Leader of any Legislature or Parliament in Canadian history.  As Manitoba’s Official Opposition’s Justice Critic, MMIWG2S and Veterans Affairs Spokesperson and House Speaker, Nahanni has unfailingly championed the rights of Manitoba’s most marginalized and vulnerable peoples, introducing Bills in support of women’s health and reproductive rights.  In 2017, she successfully brought into law the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls Honouring and Awareness Day Act, which provincially proclaims October 4 as a day which honours MMIWG2S and their families. Nahanni’s championship of Indigenous rights is steadfast and unwavering.

Muriel Stanley Venne was born in Lamont, Alberta, in 1937, one of ten children in a Métis farming family. Married at 17, she raised four children on her own after escaping her extremely violent husband. She studied education at the University of Alberta for three years, leaving the program before completing to seek full-time work to support her children. Employed by the Métis Association of Alberta, she initiated the Native Outreach program, working doggedly to persuade employers to hire Indigenous people.

In 1973, Premier Peter Lougheed named Stanley Venne to the new Alberta Human Rights Commission as a commissioner. Later, she chaired the Aboriginal Commission on Human Rights and Justice. Her work on the Commission led her to establish the Institute for the Advancement of Aboriginal Women in 1994 to both highlight Indigenous women’s achievements and campaign for an end to discriminatory practices that they faced. The annual Esquao awards celebrated the former while campaigns against injustices faced by Indigenous women in the criminal justice system formed a crucial part of the latter. Among her many honours, she was named to the Order of Canada in 2005 in recognition of her human rights’ activism. In 2017 the Alberta government named one of its buildings the Muriel Stanley Venne Provincial Centre.

Mary Two-Axe Earley was born in 1911 on the Kahnawake reserve in Quebec. She was a Mohawk and Oneida women’s rights activist.

She was denied critical rights under the Indian Act at an intersection of gender and race when she married a non-status man thereby losing her Indian status: she took on the monolith of colonialism and mobilized for change.

From 1876 to 2019, the Indian Act’s status provisions discriminated on the basis of sex, denying First Nations women and their descendants’ status in circumstances where First Nations men and their descendants were entitled to status. Prior to 1985, section 12(1)(b) of the Act operated to strip Indigenous women of their “Indian Status”, the term for registration under the Act, and barred them from passing on their status to their children if they married a man who was non-status. The section also meant that an Indigenous woman who sought a divorce from her status husband would have their status revoked.

Two-Axe Earley worked tirelessly for decades to bring about a change which would stop tying the status of Indian women to their husbands.

Finally, in 1985 the federal government responded to the numerous and ongoing calls for change and passed Bill C-31 to amend the Indian Act. The bill made various changes to the Act, and specifically reinstated status to women who had previously lost their status through marriage to non-Indigenous people. It also gave status to the children of women who regained status under the Act.

Two-Axe Earley continued her work for the remainder of her life, and was a widely celebrated activist, speaker and leader. She died in 1996.

In 1993, Jean Augustine was the first Black Canadian woman elected to Canada’s parliament.

She was born in Grenada where she excelled as a student and became a teacher. But the pay was low and she started looking for opportunities in Canada. In 1960 she arrived in Canada as a nanny. After working as a nanny for a year she went to Toronto’s Teachers’ College and earned a teaching certificate.

Subsequently she taught and volunteered with immigrant groups to improve the lives of immigrant women. In order to advance her teaching prospects she went to the University of Toronto where she earned a BA (Hons) and later a Master of Education degree. She continued teaching later becoming a vice principal and eventually principal in the Toronto District Catholic Schoolboard.

In 1995 Augustine put a motion before Parliament to recognize February as Black History Month. The motion passed unanimously in December 1995 and February was proclaimed Black History Month across Canada.

In 2002 Augustine was appointed Secretary of State for Multiculturalism and Status of Women on May 26, 2002 making her the first Black Woman to achieve a cabinet post on parliament.

After achieving a multitude of successes in Parliament Augustine retired from politics but continued to work her work in advocacy. In 2007 she was appointed as Ontario’s first Fairness Commissioner. The Office of the Fairness Commissioner (OFC) ensures that qualified foreign-trained professionals (e.g., in medicine, teaching) can get the required licences to practise in the province.

During Augustine’s tenure, the OFC influenced hundreds of improvements made to licencing procedures in Ontario — improvements that made the process easier to navigate, more transparent and impartial. After eight years at the helm of OFC, Augustine retired in March 2015.

“The federal and provincial governments have enacted no fewer than 17 pieces of legislation since our 1981 convention that are aimed at crippling public sector unions and suspending their rights. The task we have before us is no less than the preservation of a decent, caring, civilized society.” …from Hartman’s retirement speech, 1983.

As a clerk-typist for the township of North York in the mid-fifties, Grace Hartman was outraged over workplace discrimination against women. It sparked an interest in unions that led to a 30-year career as a labour activist. She spent 15 of those years as national secretary-treasurer and then national president of Canada’s largest union.

“Because of her, thousands of working women began to believe they could make a difference,” said CUPE National President Judy Darcy when Grace Hartman died in December 1994 at the age of 75.

Then CLC president Bob White said that before Hartman, public-sector unions were not as active – or growing as quickly – as other unions in the Canadian labour movement. Hartman’s 45-day jail sentence in 1981, for defying an Ontario Supreme Court back-to-work order “was very significant and courageous and a major decision by a large public sector union (leader) to really be a part of the labour movement,” said White.

During the Ontario hospital strike for better pay and bargaining rights, Hartman said she would go to jail if she had to because “if we lie down at this point, they will exploit us in ways that we haven’t even thought about.” She also led the fight against federal government wage controls and freezes in the 1970s.

Over the years, Harman received many honours. They included the Governor General’s Persons Award in 1985, the 1986 YWCA Women of Distinction Award, honourary Doctor of Laws degrees from York and Queen’s universities and induction into the Canadian Labour Hall of Fame.

An activist with the Voice of Women peace group, Hartman is remembered for her grit, courage and unwavering quest for peace and equality.

“Grace’s greatest achievements, without a doubt, are the trails she blazed for women,” said Darcy, “not with rhetoric or fiery speeches, but with quiet determination and firm resolve. She fought for things like pay equity and affirmative action literally decades before they became mainstream.”