Canadian woman’s face to be shown on the national bank note by 2018

It’s time to cash in on the achievements of Canada’s most inspirational women

After nearly a century spent with Queen Elizabeth II as the only woman to adorn the Canadian bank note, it’s been announced that another female face will be printed on bills by 2018. Unlike the Queen, however, she will be a native-born citizen.

The public submitted 26,000 proposals for who should be chosen to cover the note, and of those, 12 candidates were selected. The advisory committee will review the 12 finalists with input from a relevant public opinion survey in mind before narrowing them down to three nominees. Finally, the outstanding three will be sent to Canadian Finance Minister Bill Moreau, who will make the final decision on which accomplished woman will mark the national bank note.

The prerequisites are simple: each candidate must be a Canadian woman who made significant contributions within her lifetime, and that lifetime must have ended before April 15, 1991. The 12 candidates include Inuit artist Pitseolak Ashoona, artist and writer Emily Carr, activist and politician Thérèse Casgrain, black businesswoman and anti-racism advocate Viola Desmond, humanitarian Lotta Hitschmanova, poet and writer E. Pauline Johnson, first female aircraft designer and aeronautical engineer Elizabeth MacGill, author Lucy Maud Montgomery, Olympian Fanny Rosefeld, author Gabrielle Roy, journalist, educator, and feminist Idola Saint-Jean and activist, teacher, and politician Nellie McClung.

Every woman listed above is deserving of a place on Canada’s bank note, and recognition of the nation’s spectacular women ought to be well-celebrated, but there is some irony to this milestone that should still be taken into account.

First, Canadian women have, in fact, been on the nation’s currency. Once upon a time, they could be found on one bill and a few coins. Anne of Green Gables, a fictional character, was on a $200 gold coin in 1994. In 2013, war heroine Laura Secord was on a 25¢ and $4 coin. That same year, Canadian author Alice Munro could be found on a commemorative $5 silver coin, and strangely enough, the Famous Five—a group of Albertan women who fought to have women recognized lawfully as “persons” so that they could run for senate—and Canadian feminist and politician Thérèse Casgrain were once featured on the $50 bill.

That was in 2004, before the Bank of Canada switched paper bills out for polymer in 2011. With the paper went Casgrain and the Famous Five, and since then the Queen has been the only female to be displayed on Canadian bank notes at all. To this day, she is the only woman throughout Canadian history whose face has ever been shown prominently, in a similar fashion to male bill-markers Wilfrid Laurier, John A. Macdonald, William Lyon Mackenzie King, and Robert Borden.

Now consider this Statistics Canada fact: a Canadian woman working full-time makes 73.5¢ to a Canadian man working full-time’s dollar, and for women who belong to a minority group, that gap becomes even wider.

The point being, there is still quite a ways to go before Canadian women are as respected as Canadian men in the eyes of their government. The printing of these new bills and the recognition of remarkable women is an important step forward, but it’s equally important to remember what is left to be done.