Canadian Heritage Minutes: Viola Desmond

Vulgar History Podcast

Canadian Heritage Minutes: Viola Desmond

March 13, 2025

Ann Foster:
Hello, and welcome to a Vulgar History: Canadian Heritage Minute. It’s going to be longer than a minute, so buckle in. My name is Ann Foster, and I am recording this from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, which is in Treaty 6 territory in the country of Canada, and I have some things that I need to get off my chest. But first, I’m going to explain the concept of a Canadian Heritage Minute. 

So, starting in 1991 in Canada, every TV show, basically, any TV show watched by any Canadian, always had in at least one of the commercial breaks these 60-second Canadian Heritage Minutes, which just sort of quickly, kind of, gave you a little short story, but something that happened in Canadian history. These were the heritage minutes, and I mean, there’s so many of them, there’s hundreds at this point. They’re still making them. You know, it’s the sort of thing like in high school or college, it can be a drinking game, like, who can remember them the most? People still quote them to each other now. These are produced, were and are produced, by an organization called Historic Canada, or Historica Canada, which is a charitable organization that offers programs in both official languages, English and French. We have two official languages here to explore, learn, reflect on our history and consider what it means to be Canadian. And I have been moved to create my own Vulgar History: Canadian Heritage Minute, which again, going to be more than a minute. I’m sure it’s already been more than a minute because what the fuck is going on? 

So, I don’t… Okay. Hi to my American listeners. I don’t know what news you’re allowed to hear under your current regime so you may or may not know that Canada, the country, is fucking furious right now. We are furious. There’s a saying that we have been saying here, and I don’t know if you’ve heard it said, if you’ve encountered it. When I first heard it, I didn’t know the full context, so I’ll explain it to you so we all know together. People here are saying, “Elbows Up.” You know, there’s, like, merch that’s saying that, people are graffitiing it on things, like the vibe, it’s really just like the whole country is united behind this slogan, “Elbows Up.” So, Canada, to be clear, is a colonial country with its own fucked up history of genocide, slavery, white supremacy. We’ve got our own shit going on but I’ve never in my whole life seen the whole country come together like this. We know, God knows, we have problems here, but it’s sort of like, one of my friends was saying, it’s kind of like, you can make fun of your sibling but if someone else makes fun of your sibling, you will elbow that person in the face and break their nose. And that’s what’s happening with our country. It’s like, yeah, it’s a mess, Canada, but it’s our mess and how dare you come for us? 

So, the whole country, the whole country, is so united right now behind this slogan, including, I just really want to give a special shout-out to Quebec. Quebec is one of Canada’s provinces, it is a province with a lot of people in it who speak French. And Quebec is… there have been a few, at least two occasions during my life where they have had votes to decide, like, should we separate from the rest of Canada or not? They have a political party called the Bloc Québécois, who stands for a lot of interesting and often cool things, but one of the things they stand for is getting Quebec the fuck out of Canada. This is a province that just, like, has wanted to leave Canada my entire adult life. Quebec is on board with all of this. On International Women’s Day, on March 8th, I saw footage, I think it was in Quebec City, there was a rally for International Women’s Day and at that rally, people wearing red, they were in red for Canada. Usually in Quebec, people wear blue and white for Quebec, but they were standing up for Canada. One of the things they did is they had, I believe it was eight minutes of silence, in honour of the women in America whose rights are being removed. Like, fuck yes, Quebec! But also, Quebec is on board. Bro! Not only have you awakened the sleeping dragon that is Canada, but all of Canada, including Quebec. We can skate, bro. Everyone here plays hockey, and you’re coming for us? This is where “Elbows Up” comes from. 

So, I’m talking to you from Saskatchewan, and there is a very famous person, Canadian famous, from here called Gordie Howe, who is known as Mr. Hockey. He is now known as Mr. Hockey. Before then, he was known as Mr. Elbows. So, he was known as Mr. Elbows, because although he’s, like, a sweet, kind, gentlemanly person off the ice, when you came for him on the ice, bro! He would wield his elbows like weapons. Here’s a quote from him, and I want to point out, this was always defensive. It’s like, if you come for him, elbows up; he’s not just coming out with elbows up, it’s like, if you come for him. So, Gordie Howe, Mr. Elbows/Mr. Hockey, said, “If a guy slashed me, I’d grab his stick, pull him up alongside me, and elbow him in the head.” And this is it. This is it. Like, picture it. Someone’s coming for you, they come for you, you raise your elbow, and then your arm, and then you hit them in the nose with your elbow, is, I believe, how you complete that action. So, Canada saying “Elbows Up,” we’re not just being like, “Ooh, let’s roll up our shirt sleeves and get to work.” We’re saying “Fuck you! We’re going to break your nose with our elbows.” Why are we saying this? 

So, a few weeks ago, the premier of Manitoba, Manitoba is another Canadian province, the premier there is Wab Kinew, an Indigenous man. He said, “Canada can’t be a punching bag and we have to get our elbows up.” He said that. And then a few weeks later, recently, like last week, on SNL, Mike Myers, beloved Canadian icon, Wayne’s World, Canadian characters, he’s wearing a T-shirt that says, “Canada’s not for sale,” and then he mimes lifting up his elbow and mouths, “Elbows up.” So, the whole country is just like, “Fuck yes! Elbows up.” It’s a rallying cry. It’s on graffiti. It’s on merch. #ElbowsUp. The whole country is united in a way I’ve never seen. Not during the Olympics, like… Quebec, bro! Like, Quebec is in on it. Everybody is here. 

I went grocery shopping yesterday and one of the things that happened in Canada is we’re all just being like, “Fuck other countries, specifically the one just to the south of us. Just that one, really.” So, Canada is just being like, when we go shopping, we’re just going to buy our own stuff. We’re just going to buy Canadian-made products, and every store has put little Canadian flags on the shelf underneath the product so we can tell when we’re shopping which products are Canadian or not. We’re finding ways to work together. Provinces for ages have had just impediments to shipping something from one province to another, and the premiers are being like, “Let’s look at that. Let’s try to make it easier to ship things throughout Canada. Let’s just be self-sufficient.” If you’re just thinking about in terms of products, in terms of industry, “Oh well, what are the things that Canada sends to other places, like for instance, the US?” Oh, I don’t know. Oil, gas, electricity, potash, which is important for farming, apparently, paper, wood pulp to make your toilet paper. These are the things that could and perhaps already have become really expensive and/or unavailable in the US. You know what we get from the US? Orange juice, Kentucky whiskey, I don’t know, peanut butter. We’re fine. We’re good with our own stuff we have here. 

I don’t know, man. I feel like by the time this podcast, this episode comes out — which we’re rushing into production because I’m so mad — I feel like the whole country, we’re just going to go Bugs Bunny, just get out a saw and just cut ourselves off the North American continent, maybe grab Mexico and just float over to Europe, join the EU is where things seem to be headed. 

So, I do a podcast about history. Not a lot of the episodes have been about Canadian history, and that’s on me, and that’s also on the white supremacist history of the Western world, where there is a lot more written about white women in England than there have been about other women in most other places in the world. But anyway, the Canadian history that I know about, a lot of it, honestly, I found in Heritage Minutes. I’m going to tell you a story right now that is in a Canadian Heritage Minute, and I’m doing this as a special mini-episode, separate from the other episodes, just because I’m really worked up about this. The OG Vulgar History listeners, people who were listening in 2019, 2020, maybe you’ll recall when COVID started, like, five years ago this week, basically when the world shut down, I did some little mini-episodes then as well, just about pandemics in history and stuff so this is kind of maybe a similar thing. I feel like I’m probably going to do some more of these Canadian history minutes, and that’s the thing. Part of why I haven’t done a lot of Canadian women on Vulgar History in the podcast is because I like to do an hour-long podcast and to find a person where I can talk about them, where there’s enough facts known to make it an hour-long, Canadian history is more concise or something. But this is a story that I really want to tell you, that I’ve wanted to tell you for a while, and it is about the one and only Viola Desmond. 

So, she’s from Halifax, Nova Scotia. I live in Saskatchewan now; I was born in Halifax, Nova Scotia. I grew up there, it’s on the east coast of Canada. So, Viola Desmond was a Black woman. She was born July 6, 1914. And I do want to clarify, just for people who might not know, that there has always been, in the context of since the 1700s when Halifax was invented as a city, a strong, vibrant Black community on the east coast of Canada, especially in Nova Scotia. A lot of that came from people who escaped slavery in the Caribbean, the Maroons, also some people who, after the British lost the American Revolution, some of those people fled, like free Black people, up to Nova Scotia as well. So, there was, and there still is, and there has been for a really long time, a really strong Black cultural community in Nova Scotia, and that’s where Viola was born into. So, there’s a lot of Black people there. 

She’s this glamorous, beautiful person and she recognized there was a lack of professional hair services for Black women, not just in Halifax, but in the entire province. She was born in 1914 so I’m going to imagine probably around the 1930s is when she’s, like, an adult person, and she’s this glamorous lady, she’s beautiful, she’s stylish, she’s so chic. Look at pictures of her, she’s gorgeous, amazing hair, amazing outfits. And she was just like, “There are not places for this thriving Black community, like the women, where we can get her hair done.” So, she’s not just a glamour lady, like, she’s an entrepreneur. She sees how she can give back, but also how she can make a name for herself. So, she decided to train herself as a beautician, which she could not do in Nova Scotia because Black women weren’t allowed to attend beauty school. There wasn’t, like, Jim Crow segregation but there was a lot of racism and prejudice going on there. So, she went to Montreal to train, in Quebec, she also went to the U.S. to train in Atlantic City, and in New York City. She’s getting cross-trained, she’s learning all the skills. 

So, she came back to Nova Scotia. She came back to Halifax because she wanted to give back; she knew that this was a place where people needed this, they needed Black hair care. So, she not only opened a salon, but she also opened a training school so she could train other people to become beauticians to help Black women with their hair, which is just admirable and wonderful and lovely. She’s the Fenty Beauty of her time. She also started her own line of beauty products, like hair products and makeup. A lot of them, the packaging was purple, purple was her favourite colour. 

So, I love that she started a business. It’s a business for Black women. I love that she’s giving back, like Pat McGrath of her time, just innovating and finding ways to, kind of like, make a name for herself, like keep herself going, have this career and also be giving back to the next generation of Black people. And because it’s the 1940s and she’s in Nova Scotia, she’s going town to town being like, “Hey, these are my products. Do you want to sell them in your store?” et cetera. So, she would just kind of go place to place. And in 1945, November 8, 1945— and you know nothing is good when a specific date comes out. It’s like, why do you know that name? Something terrible is going to happen. And it does. So, she went to New Glasgow, Nova Scotia, and while there, wouldn’t you know? Her car broke down. So, while her car was being fixed, she was like, oh, movie theatre nearby, great. So, she went to the nearby Roseland Film Theatre to see a movie, you know, she had some time to spend. And again, there’s no segregation laws, there’s no Jim Crow, we’re in Canada. It’s a country with a rich history of anti-Black racism, but there’s no specific law. Informally, there is, kind of like, cultural practices. 

There were no signs in the movie theatre. I feel like this is a town where maybe there’s not a lot of Black people at this time, perhaps. You know what? Could be wrong. I could be wrong. But she certainly wasn’t from that town, and she was just, like, there’s floor seats in the movie theatre and then sort of like a balcony. And she’s like, “Well, I want the floor seats. Those are the better seats.” So, she takes a floor seat, there’s no signs anywhere saying, like, Black people can’t sit here. She does and then it turns out that the policy of this place was they only sold floor seats to white people. So, an employee came up to her and was like, you know, “You can’t sit here. You need to move.” And she’s like, “There’s no sign saying I can’t sit here.” And she’s like, “Bro, I’m going to sit here.” This is where there’s some comparisons to… I have seen it said, when people, you know, when you’re trying to compare a historical person, but in context, you compare them to another historical person. It’s like “the Rosa Parks of Canada.” And it’s like, yeah, she is a Black woman who sat somewhere and was told to move, there’s that comparison. Rosa Parks was part of a larger civil rights movement and Viola Desmond was just a lady who wanted to watch a movie. So, similarities, yes. But Viola Desmond was very much on her own in this. 

So anyway, she was just like, “I’m not going to move.” She’s like, “I will pay the extra penny to sit here,” because it cost, like, one penny extra to sit on the floor versus the balcony. Anyway, they took her. They forcefully removed her from the theatre, which sounds, like, extremely forcefully, to the point that she injured her hip in the process so they’re grabbing her very forcefully. And then she’s sent to fucking jail for 12 hours. What is the charge? Tax evasion because floor seats were one more cent in tax and she hadn’t paid that one cent because this is all bullshit. So anyway, tax evasion. She’s taken to court the next day. She has no legal representation because she’s in New Glasgow and she doesn’t know anybody and it’s, like, a fake charge and everyone’s just being heinous to her. Like, she’s just being set up, being gaslit by these people. She’s ordered to pay twenty-six dollars in fines, which is like in olden times, I’m sure more than what twenty-six dollars would be now. But it’s like the principle of it, too. She’s just like, “This is some bullshit. There wasn’t… what the fuck is happening?” She hired a lawyer, she filed a lawsuit against the theatre. The lawsuit was dismissed because of racism and I’m going to skip over… But basically, in quick order, she was like, “Fuck this.” She closed her Nova Scotia businesses, she closed the beauty salon, she closed the school, her beauty products, and she just like, got the fuck out of there. She’s like, “I’m moving to Montreal, Quebec. Au revoir.” Later, she moved to New York City, which is where she lived until she died, age 50, in 1965. So, that was the end of her life, but not the end of her story. 

So, if you go, in Halifax, on Gottingen Street, North Gottingen Street, which is one of the historically Black neighbourhoods in Halifax, there’s a beautiful— And this was actually brought to my attention by a member of the Tits Out Brigade who lives near there, like, near this mural. It’s sort of like a mural/display where they’ve painted/découpage wallpapered up so it looks like her salon. There’s a lot of purple everywhere because purple is her favourite colour and that was the colour of her products. And so, you know, there’s chairs with, like, the hairdryer on it and kind of signs advertising her products around. And it’s this beautiful tribute to her on the street where she was so important. So, how do I know her story? Not because I was told it growing up in Halifax, for I was not, because racism. But she is the subject of a literal Canadian Heritage Minute as well, but also her family and the Black community of Nova Scotia kept her story alive, demanding that she be given respect as a Canadian hero for standing up for herself and also for everything she achieved as this entrepreneur, businesswoman. 

And so, her family, the Black community, advocated for her for decades, which has resulted in her being honoured in many ways. For instance, a few years ago, a stamp was issued with her portrait. There’s a ferry, like Halifax, there’s a harbour there and there’s ferries across the harbour, one of them is called the Viola Desmond. And since 2018, her portrait has been on the $10 bill in Canada. And so, let’s see, so much stuff. She’s been named a National Historic Person, she has a star on Canada’s Walk of Fame. In 2010, the Nova Scotia Lieutenant Governor, Mayann Francis, a Black woman, granted Viola Desmond a posthumous pardon for her crime of tax evasion, which was the first ever posthumous pardon granted in Canada. And Viola Desmond Day is celebrated annually on November 8th to celebrate this amazing woman who’s on the $10 bill. 

Like, just to emphasize, just to emphasize, again, Canada, so much fucked up stuff going on right now, has gone on here, and also, we have Viola Desmond, this Black woman, this entrepreneur who has done so dirty on our $10 bill! This month, or actually last month, every year in Canada in February for Black History Month, there’s a stamp released with a notable woman from Canadian Black history. This year’s was Marie-Josèphe Angélique, who we’ve talked about on the Vulgar History podcast, the enslaved Black woman who burned down Montreal. Like this country honours badass women. And I really appreciate that. Not every country does. Like, don’t come for Canada. Like, what are you doing? Like, we will fuck you up. [chuckles] These are our heroes, Gordie Howe, the man who elbows people in the face is our hero. Viola Desmond on the $10 bill, Marie-Josèphe Angélique on our stamp. Like, come on, like, what are you doing? Why are you coming for Canada? Like, be for fucking real. 

So, if you’re an American thinking, like, “Oh, this sucks,” like, which, I was just in Minneapolis meeting with several Americans, many of whom expressed apologetic feelings about what is happening there right now, and I know it’s #NotAllAmericans. But if you’re like feeling like some kind of way and you want to support Canada, you want to support Canadians, well, you’re already doing it by listening to this podcast, which is supporting a Canadian person, who is me, because this podcast is on the Realm network, which is an American network. So technically, America is paying me every time you listen to this podcast, because that’s where I get my advertising revenue from. 

As for us in Canada, like, we’re shopping local, bro. [laughs] Like, our elbows are up. People here are, like, enlisting in the military. This wave of patriotism is just, like, truly never seen anything like it. But the elbows up of it all, it’s like, yeah, we’re not a country… You know, like America has got a really sort of like forward-facing, on the offence, if you’re a sports team, I’m not good at sports metaphors but like America is like, “Fuck yeah, patriotism!” And Canada is like, “Mm, yeah. I guess we’re Canadian.” But if you come for us then, like, elbows up. Patriotism is what’s happening. 

You know, I have mixed emotions about being a Canadian a lot of the time because of the history of this, like, colonial nation. Just me as, like, a white person in Canada, it’s just kind of like, I know this country is so shitty for so many people. In the history, like the genocide, the racism, it’s all there. But this is like a beautiful moment of all of us… It’s like, what is it? “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.” People from all walks of life, like, the pro-Canada vibes right now are heartening and wholesome and heartwarming, and I don’t… Sometimes, I don’t know. Sometimes I feel sort of ashamed of, like, that Canada is where… I don’t know. Can I say that on a podcast? Not ashamed, but just kind of like, “This is this country that was founded on genocide. And here I am, a white person living in it.” And I just kind of like, that’s a shitty thing. That’s a shitty thing. But people, all people, all people in Canada, from all different walks of life, all different cultural backgrounds, like, everyone is just like, “You’re fucking with us? We will fuck you up.” And that’s the kind of patriotism I can get behind. So, I don’t know wherever you are, you know, if you’ve got Canadian maple syrup nearby, get some, pour it a shot glass, raise a toast to Canada, this glorious and fucked up place. Like, I don’t know, I’m feeling all kinds of ways. And I feel like I’m going to do more of these Canadian Heritage Minutes because there’s more stories that I would like to tell you so you can further understand, like, the interesting people who are the reason why this country is what it is today. 

But yeah, I think a crucial difference between what’s happening in America and what’s happening in Canada can be demonstrated by the fact that we have Viola Desmond on the $10 bill. Years ago, I think in America, there was going to be Harriet Tubman on currency. But then pretty sure that never happened, although there is the Anna May Wong commemorative quarter. Canada has a lot to reckon with, obviously, in terms of treatment in the past and also contemporaneously of our Indigenous communities. And, you know, I’m not going to say that Canada is a perfect place or whatever, but, like, people here… There’s good people here who are doing the best they can. Seeing Mike Myers wearing that shirt on SNL and hearing Wab Kinew say “Elbows Up,” like it’s filled me with this rage-filled patriotism to an extent that I’ve never really felt before. So, I just wanted to share this all with you. 

Thanks for listening. Pants on, tits out. If you’re in Canada, you know, elbows up. Keep buying local, keep shopping local. We’re all in this together. And au revoir for now. 

Vulgar History is hosted, written, and researched by Ann Foster, that’s me! The editor is Cristina Lumague. Theme music is by the Severn Duo. The Vulgar History show image is by Deborah Wong. Transcripts are written by Aveline Malek. Find transcripts of recent episodes at VulgarHistory.com.

References:

Canadian History Ehx episode about Viola Desmond

‘Elbows up’ rallying cry evokes memories of Mr. Hockey by Alastair Steele, CBC