Central bank, feds to announce first Canadian woman on front of banknote
The Bank of Canada and the federal finance minister will announce later Wednesday which Canadian woman will grace the front of the country’s next banknote.
The five women in contention for the honour are activist Viola Desmond, poet Emily Pauline Johnson, engineer Elizabeth (Elsie) MacGill, athlete Fanny (Bobbie) Rosenfeld and suffragette Idola Saint-Jean.
There were more than 26,000 submissions from the public, which was later whittled down to 461 eligible nominees who had Canadian citizenship and had been dead for at least 25 years.
An advisory council that included Merna Forster, the woman who spearheaded the call to feature a woman on the front of Canada’s currency, later reduced that to a long list of 12 before coming up with the short list.
The selected woman will be featured on the front of the next note in the Bank of Canada’s new series of bills in 2018.
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