Canada's new $10 bill named international banknote of the year

Viola Desmond's trailblazing act of defiance -- overlooked for decades by most Canadians -- was honoured Thursday in a Halifax ceremony. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/HO-Bank of Canada)

Canada's new $10 bill featuring Nova Scotia human rights icon Viola Desmond has been named banknote of the year.

The bill, which also features a map of Halifax's historic north end as well as the Canadian Museum for Human Rights in Winnipeg, was honoured in a vote by the International Bank Note Society.

The society says in a news release that the Desmond bill was a favourite of its voting membership right from the start.

The purple polymer bill was the first vertically oriented banknote issued in Canada.

Desmond is the first black person -- and the first non-royal woman -- on a regularly circulating Canadian banknote.

The bill marks a growing recognition of Desmond's refusal to leave the whites-only section of a Nova Scotia movie theatre on Nov. 8, 1946 -- nearly a decade before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a segregated bus in Alabama -- and the seminal role it played in Canada's civil rights movement.