The new $10 bill was released yesterday and is the first vertically oriented Canadian bank note to be added into circulation.
The note also is the first one to feature an iconic Canadian woman, Viola Desmond, a successful Black Nova Scotian businesswoman. In 1946 Desmond was jailed and fined for refusing to leave a whites-only section in a movie theatre. Desmond took the charges to court and it is one of the first known legal challenges against racial segregation brought to court by a Black woman in Canada.