page_title: Human rights in Canada
section_title: The King v Desmond (1946)
hierarchical_section_title: Human rights in Canada / History / Confederation and onwards / Early cases / The King v Desmond (1946)
caption_attribution_description: English: Viola Desmond, Halifax, Nova Scotia
context_page_description: Human rights in Canada have come under increasing public attention and legal protection since World War II. Prior to that time, there were few legal protections for human rights. The protections which did exist focused on specific issues, rather than taking a general approach to human rights. There were notable events in Canada's history which would today be considered violations of human rights.
  The current legal framework for the protection of human rights in Canada consists of constitutional entitlements, and statutory human rights codes, both federal and provincial. The constitutional foundation of the modern Canadian human rights system is the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms of 1982, which is part of the Constitution of Canada. Before 1982, there was little constitutional protection against government interference with human rights. Today, the Charter guarantees fundamental freedoms, democratic rights, mobility rights, legal rights, equality rights, and language rights.
context_section_description: Viola Desmond, a black Nova Scotian, went to see a movie in a theatre in New Glasgow, Nova Scotia. The owner of the theatre would only allow white people to sit on the main floor. Non-whites had to sit in the gallery. Desmond, who was from out of town, did not know of the policy.  She bought a ticket for the movie and went onto the main floor. When the theatre employees told her to go to the gallery, she refused.  The police were called and she was forcibly removed. Desmond spent a night in jail and was fined $20, on the basis that by sitting on the main floor when her ticket was for the gallery, she had deprived the provincial government of the additional tax for the main floor ticket:  one cent.  She sought to challenge her treatment, by an application for judicial review of the tax ruling.  The court dismissed the challenge on the basis that the tax statute was neutral with respect to race.  The judge suggested in his decision that the outcome might have been different if she had instead appealed the conviction, on the basis that the law was being used improperly by the theatre owner to enforce a "Jim Crow" type of segregation.
  In 2018, the Bank of Canada announced that Viola Desmond would be the person shown on the new ten-dollar note.
caption: Viola Desmond, who defied segregation in a Nova Scotia movie theatre
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