My Civic Role
Model
1. Complete the information in the two boxes below.
Name Viola Desmond
Date of Birth July 6,1914
Date of Death (if applicable) February 7, 1965
Where was this person born? Halifax
What is the Civic issue which is most Civil rights
associated with this person?
2. In the next section, list at least three sources you have consulted in order to gather
information about your Civic Role Model. Ideally, you will have three different types of
sources (i.e. books, articles, internet sources, personal interviews, video clips, etc.), as
well. Replace all of the text in the boxes with your own information.
Title Author Date of Other
Publication information
Source #1 Viola Desmond Unknown/government October 04,
(1914-1965) - of Canada 2019
History and
culture
Source #2 One woman's Unknown/Canadian April 16, 2018
resistance museum for human
rights
Source #3 Canadian museum of June 21,2019
video The story of Viola rights
Desmond
3. In the space below, insert three different photos of your role model.
4. Answer the questions below.
What did your role model She refused to leave the white-only section of a movie
DO about the issue? theater until she got arrested.
What was the inspiration She was tired of being discriminated against because of
or motivation for this her skin tone.
individual's actions?
Do you think that this Although she lost the case when she went to court, the
individual achieved her or courage to stand up for what you believe in still inspire
his desired results? (This people today.
question may or may not
be easy to answer…if not,
you can leave it blank)
Who was affected by the This happened on November 8 1946 which is 74 years
ago and they're still teaching about her impact on the
actions of your role model?
(Was it a small or large civil rights In school today. Even though her movement
alone didn’t directly change anything, it opened peoples
group of people?)
eyes and a lot more people did the same as her and
demand equal rights.
What changed for these It changed the way they acted. Instead of letting
people? themselves be discriminated against, they stood up for
what was right and it was like a domino effect starting
from Viola Desmond.
Were any of the outcomes I wouldn’t say unintentional, but I don’t think Viola
unintentional? knew how big of an impact she would be to society and
she I think she would do it again 10000 more times but
fight a lot harder to dictate respect and equality.
How significant were this Viola’s actions were very significant to civil rights
individual's actions with because as a citizen and businesswomen, she wasn’t
regard to the issue? being treated the same as people with white skin and
nobody before her was trying to stop the racism.
Did this individual's Viola Desmond’s actions caused a lot of awareness to
actions bring about a the people around her that were going to through the
major change—a new same discrimination. After what she did, others started
defending themselves and the more the awareness
law, more public
grew, that’s how we got civil rights. Black people are
awareness, different
also going through racism today, and although its not
social attitudes towards quite the same, history repeats itself.
the issue? (Are any of
these actions considered
a “turning point” on the
issue?)
“Fun Facts” about my Civic Role Model:
