Viola Desmond arrest anniversary

 

On this day in 1946, beautician and entrepreneur Viola Desmond was arrested for refusing to leave the whites-only section of the Roseland movie theatre in New Glasgow, Nova Scotia. In 2018, Ms. Desmond's fight for her civil rights was celebrated on the Canadian $10 bill, the face of which she remains today.

Indigenous Veterans Day, 2021

In advance of Remembrance Day, which is Thursday, today is Indigenous Veterans Day. Naturally, on social media, the question "Why do we need a separate Remembrance Day for Natives?" has already been passive-aggressively asked more than once already. I suspect one answer might be that it's not "separate," it's complementary. And it seems particularly worthwhile to set aside a day to honour veterans whom many non-Native Canadians, with no discernible irony, thought of as something less than "Canadian," but who still courageously, and with valour, fought, bled, and died for Canada, in war upon war, anyway.