In November 1946, Viola Desmond had to make a business trip. She drove from where she lived in Halifax to a place called Sydney.

Viola Desmond was one of the oldest from her large family that had ten brothers and sisters.

Viola's father had many jobs and one of them was cutting hair which relates to the hair salon business Viola has. 

as a child Viola Desmond had dreams of opening a beauty salon. she found out that she could not attend any beauty schools where she lived because sh was black. Instead of giving up and that dream she had, Viola Desmond was trained to be a hairdresser and beautician in the United States and Montreal.

Everyone loved Viola's salon because she was caring, funny, and smart.  Her customers were black women who weren't able to go to any hair salons in Halifax. After that Viola made her own products and started a beauty school so she could train other people.

While Driving to Sydney Viola's car started to have trouble so she went to get help.

Help, Help

Viola had to do something to make the time go by while her car was being fixed. 

Viola saw a movie nearby and went to go watch it while her car was being fixed.

Viola went to the ticket seller and bought a movie ticket for the downstairs section seats. Viola went into the movie theatre and sat in the seat she paid for. When the movie was just about to begin the movie workers said her movie ticket was for the balcony seats.

Viola didn't want to sit on the balcony so she went back to the ticket seller and demanded a seat for the downstairs section but the ticket seller refused. Viola offered to give extra money to get that seat. The ticket seller said that she can't sell downstairs seats to her kind of people and never said anything about her skin colour but Viola knew she was talking about her skin colour.