Looked in your wallet lately? Besides being a little thinner than last Christmas we are all in store for a new gift. I'm talking about the Bank of Canada bank notes we might have. Change is on the way in the form of the images displayed on them.
Currently we have prominent prime ministers and of course the head of our Constitutional Monarchy: Queen Elizabeth II. Sir Wilfrid Laurier, the first bilingual prime minister is on the five dollar bill. Sir John A. Macdonald, widely accepted as the founding father of Confederation on the $10. As mentioned earlier; Queen Elizabeth II, our head of state, is on the $20; William Lyon Mackenzie King, the longest-serving prime minister in not only Canada but also the Commonwealth, on the $50, and then there is Sir Robert Borden, the first prime minister from the west (Calgary) and a businessman who became the architect for Canada's escape from the economic fallout of the 1930s.
Nothing really special here, like most modern and progressive nations in the world, bank notes are traditional and tangible locations of a country's political and economic strength. In the United States, the presidents are a common term used instead of denominations. You might refer money in terms of Andrew Jacksons, George Washingtons and Thomas Jeffersons. And then of course the currency is a stable example to the rest of the world of a nation's prominence and long-term economic health.
So where is this all heading?
Starting in 2018, Sir John A. Macdonald will be replaced on the ten dollar bill by Viola Desmond. Ms. Desmond has been selected to grace the $1.2 billion worth of ten dollar bills circulated in Canada. Former prime minister of Canada? No. Ms. Desmond has been selected because she was a black woman who was denied access and fined for sitting in the “Whites Only” section of the New Glasglow movie theatre in Nova Scotia and who then went through the court system in an effort to obtain her civil rights.
So here is where I state my opinion on this change. Ms. Desmond was a strong and noble advocate for civil rights and represents her race and her gender in an admirable way. But is the ten dollar bill the right place to recognize this? Does her image fit in the sequence that has been used in our currency? Is her image on the bill more appropriate than that of Canada's first prime minister? Perhaps I am alone here but my answer to these is, no.
I will take my opinion only one step further. As a matter of fact, I think this move in terms of recognition of the woman’s movement and minority civil rights is a backward step. We need to see political and legal change in this country, not lip-service and political correctness.
The recent History Moment commercial of Ms. Desmond's story, along with inclusions in school curricula, are the best first moves. Inclusion is the key and not at the expense of excluding Sir John A. Macdonald. Isn't there room for all our heroes? And is Macdonald being excluded because he was a white Anglo-Saxon protestant (WASP)? That, I think is discrimination which would mean we are moving towards a new level of racism and sexism; No, that can't be it.
Finally, for the sake of full disclosure, when those who made the final selection, Stepen Poloz, Governor of the Bank of Canada, Bill Morneau, Minister of Finance, and Patty Hajdu, Minister of Status of Women, they also announced that currently plans are to move Sir John A. Macdonald to the $50 or $100 bills at some later date. So really, we will be ridding ourselves only of William Lyon Mackenzie King or Robert Borden. I guess that will be much better.
Gary Gabel
Madge Lake
