The new $10 banknote featuring Viola Desmond will go into circulation next week.
“I’m gonna let them know that it’s my great-great-grandfather’s brother’s wife to every cashier that I pay,” said Desmond's distant relative, Dorian Odusanya.
The grade seven student said he plans to frame the $10 bill.
Members of the Barrie Afro-Caribbean Multicultural Association are also excited about the new Canadian currency.
“It’s way, way overdue,” said Ebenezer Inkumsh. “It says to the world that hey, our struggles have finally been recognized.”
In 1946 Viola Desmond went to a movie in a Halifax theatre while work was being done on her car. She was dragged out by police and jailed when she refused to leave her seat in the whites-only section. At that time, black people were only allowed to sit in the balcony section of the theatre.
It took 63 years for Nova Scotia to issue a posthumous apology and pardon for the incident, and 72 years for Desmond to become, not only the first African-Canadian featured on a Canadian bill, but also the first woman other than the Queen.
The new bill will be displayed at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights on Monday.
