It seems strange, looking back, that there was segregation in Canada within living memory. I remember the end of segregation in the United States -- it's hard to believe that there were "white only" restrooms even in the 1960's:
Nova Scotia has apologized and granted a pardon to Viola Desmond, a black woman who was convicted for sitting in a whites-only section of a movie theatre in 1946.
"Today is meant to right a 65-year-old wrong," Justice Minister Ross Landry said Thursday in a ceremony at Province House.
Premier Darrell Dexter apologized to Desmond's family and to all black Nova Scotians for the institutional racism of the past.
http://tinyurl.com/y6373wr
4 comments:
Thanks for highlighting this.
It became one of the items I send my mother from time to time.
We like to remind each other the world does progress, even if it seems unnervingly slow at times. We don't always agree on everything, but she gave me the gift of recognizing that through daily trials and tribulations. For that, I'm eternally grateful.
It still exists in Ontario with the insistence that only Catholic schools can receive public funding.
Now now, funding Catholic schools is rather different from saying only Whites can sit at the front of the bus.
Agreed, Jim.But it this is 2010.
We saw a campaign centered around protecting the exclusive right of Catholics to send their children to a religious school using public dollars while denying all others that same access.
HRC can insist that an obese women must be given a prime parking spot in an apartment building but cannot make a ruling that allows equal access to religious schools.
What burns me is that some of the people who defend the status quo genuinely believe they are leading the cause for human rights in Canada.
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