Recognizing prominent women through currency
Last week, the Bank of Canada released their shortlist of Canadian women who could end up with their face on the new bank notes, slated to be released in 2018.
There was an open call for nominations, followed by a long list, and a short list, which were determined by an independent advisory council. The long list featured the likes of artist Emily Carr, suffragette Nellie McClung, and authors Gabrielle Roy (Bonheur d’occasion) and Lucy Maud Montgomery (Anne of Green Gables).
The governor of the Bank of Canada along with the minister of finance will make the final decision, which will be announced on Dec. 8. The final five are activist Viola Desmond, engineer Elizabeth MacGill, poet E. Pauline Johnson (also known as Tekahionwake), Olympian Fanny Rosenfeld, and suffragette Idola Saint-Jean.
If you’re like me, you’ve never heard of those women before.
Not knowing the names and stories of these women is indicative of a larger problem: Canadian students study history from the primary grades right through high school, but only a certain kind of history.
These five women were breaking ground in their respective disciplines in the first half of the 20th century (except Johnson, who was active mainly in the late-19th century).
“The women who appear on our list should resonate with Canadians and reflect the diversity of Canada,” said the advisory council when they released the long list of 12 nominees.
But in order to resonate, there has to be an initial point of contact.
Having a woman on Canadian currency other than the Queen of England enacts a shift in socio-political power dynamics that I believe took place some time ago.It’s not unusual for institutions to be a little behind the curve—the women longlisted by the Bank of Canada are proof of how those institutional boundaries were, and are, pushed.
In 1946, Viola Desmond fought racial inequality in Nova Scotia when she refused to move to the “coloured” section of a movie theatre. She was arrested and held overnight in jail. Eventually, Desmond was charged with defrauding the provincial government over the seat’s difference in value from the balcony sections, which amounted to one cent.
Elizabeth MacGill was the first woman in Canadian history to receive bachelor’s and master’s degrees in electrical and aeronautical engineering, respectively. She was effectively the world’s first female aeronautical engineer. MacGill was also the chief aeronautical engineer for Canadian Car and Foundry (Can Car) during the Second World War, and was nicknamed “Queen of the Hurricanes” for her work on the Hawker Hurricane fighter planes.
Emily Pauline Johnson, who went by her Mohawk name Tekahionwake, was a prolific writer, performer, and poet. Daughter of a Mohawk chief and an English immigrant, she toured North America and was revered for her talent in the dramatic arts. She was breaking down social barriers between Indigenous and Anglo-Canadian cultures over a century ago.
Fanny “Bobbie” Rosenfeld represented Canada at the 1928 Olympic Games in Amsterdam, the first time women were allowed to compete in track and field events at the Olympic level. Rosenfeld was the lead Canadian runner in the 100-metre relay, which won gold with a record-breaking time of 48.4 seconds. She also won silver in the 100-metre dash. Following her athletic career, Rosenfeld became a sports columnist for the Montreal Daily Herald and The Globe and Mail, defending and promoting women in sport during its contentious pioneering years in North America.
Idola Saint-Jean was the first Québécois woman to run in a federal election. Along with her interest in politics, Saint-Jean was also a professor of French language at McGill University. She devoted her life to suffrage, and played a major role in winning women’s right to vote in Québec in the years after women won the right to vote in national elections.
What these women have in common is legacy: long after their deaths, Canadians still benefit from the work done to improve the status of women and minorities in Canada.However, there seems to be a major disconnect between these foundational, cataclysmic figures, and the repercussions of what they achieved.
My qualm isn’t with the Bank of Canada, it’s with the provincial and national education systems. Social studies taught us about ancient Greece and Egypt, and history taught us about Canada’s foundations and its role in the World Wars.
If Jacques Cartier and D-Day are par for the course, Canadians need to ask for more in current primary and secondary educational programs. There are so many Canadian figures behind the carefully-chosen scenes who devoted their lives to the improvement of social, political, and economic conditions of others.
Canada is celebrated for having such a high quality of life, but it’s important to encounter and engage with the movements and figures that made this quality of life possible.
I may just be speaking for myself, but as a millennial, I have an aversion to Queen Elizabeth, the royal family, the dukes and duchesses, and the other faces of colonialist traces in Canada. I could care less which rosy-cheeked royal child was photographed wearing which designer outfit.
What I care about is women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), a movement which apparently began long before second-wave feminism.
What I care about is hearing and understanding the previously quieted voices of Indigenous women, which apparently began over a century before the creation of the inquiry for missing and murdered Aboriginal women.
What I care about is women in sport, free to train and compete at all levels, which apparently began 90 years before Saudi Arabia ever sent a woman to compete at the Olympic Games.
The Bank of Canada has started a national conversation about ground-breaking, inspirational Canadian women.
The problem is, we should have been having this conversation and celebrating these women a long time ago.
I look forward to the day when I will buy my morning coffee with a bill that represents more than the colonial and paternal narratives in Canadian history. Even more, I look forward to a time when educational curricula incorporate the multiple histories that factor into the country we live in today.
Photo courtesy of KMR Photography -CC-BY-2.0.