At a former theatre in Nova Scotia, where Viola Desmond was jailed more than 75 years ago for sitting in a section reserved for white people, she was honoured on Friday for her contributions to Canadian civil rights.

On a business trip, Desmond was short-sighted and sat in the floor section of the Roseland to see the screen clearly while waiting for her car to be fixed. She was removed from the theatre by police when she resisted being asked to leave.

She was imprisoned for 12 hours following her arrest, followed by a $26 tax evasion fine. Desmond's imprisonment could only be legally justified by a penalty based on the one-cent tax differential between floor and balcony tickets. The province issued a posthumous apology and pardoned Desmond's incarceration in April 2010; she passed away in 1965.

Nearly 10 years before Rosa Parks insisted on keeping her seat on a segregated bus in Alabama, this brave woman did something similar. Desmond's involvement in the struggle for civil rights was first underappreciated, but attention has increased in recent years.

Source: CBC