Viola Desmond, 'Canada's Rosa Parks', to appear on banknote

A black woman often described as Canada's Rosa Parks for her 1946 decision to sit in a whites-only section of a Nova Scotia cinema will be the first Canadian woman to be celebrated on the face of a Canadian banknote.

Viola Desmond will grace the front of the 10 dollar bill when the next series goes into circulation in 2018, finance minister Bill Morneau said.