Canadian ten-dollar note

The Canadian ten-dollar note is one of the most common banknotes of the Canadian dollar.

Ten dollars

Country	Canada
Value	10 Canadian dollars
Width	69.85 mm
Height	152.4 mm
Security features	Holographic stripe, watermark, EURion constellation, tactile marks, registration device, raised printing, UV printing
Material used	Polymer
Years of printing	2018–present
Obverse
Design	Viola Desmond, with a map showing Halifax in the background
Designer	Canadian Bank Note Company
Design date	2018
Reverse
Design	The Canadian Museum for Human Rights, accompanied by an eagle feather
Designer	Canadian Bank Note Company
Design date	2018

The current $10 note is purple, and the obverse features a portrait of Viola Desmond, a Black Nova Scotian businesswoman who challenged racial segregation at a film theatre in New Glasgow, Nova Scotia, in 1946. The background of the portrait is a colourful rendition of the street grid of Halifax, Nova Scotia, including the waterfront, Citadel and Gottingen Street, where Desmond's Studio of Beauty Culture was located. Foil features on the note face include both the Flag and Coat of Arms of Canada. This is the first Canadian banknote to feature neither a prime minister nor a royal in its solo portrait, and the first to feature a solo female Canadian other than Queen Elizabeth II.^[a]

The reverse features the Canadian Museum for Human Rights in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Part of the background pattern mirrors the museum's interior architecture and its ramps connecting multiple levels. A foil eagle feather is prominent, symbolizing ideals such as truth, power and freedom. A quotation from section 15 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms appears in both English and French.

The foil window at the base of the note includes an iridescent rendering of the Library of Parliament's vaulted dome ceiling, which can be seen from both sides of the note.

The vertical $10 note entered circulation on November 19, 2018.^[3]

Series	Main colour	Obverse	Reverse	Series year	Issued	Withdrawn
1935 series	Purple	Mary, Princess Royal and Countess of Harewood	Harvest allegory	1935	11 March 1935
1937 series	Purple	George VI	Transportation allegory	1937	19 July 1937
Canadian Landscape	Purple	Elizabeth II	Mount Burgess, British Columbia	1954	9 September 1954
Scenes of Canada	Purple	John A. Macdonald	Polymer Corporation oil refinery in Sarnia, Ontario	1971	8 November 1971	27 June 1989
Birds of Canada	Purple	John A. Macdonald	Osprey	1989	27 June 1989	17 January 2001
Canadian Journey	Purple	John A. Macdonald	Peacekeeping forces and war memorial; poppy field and excerpt from "In Flanders Fields" by John McCrae	2001	17 January 2001	18 May 2005
				2005	18 May 2005	7 November 2013
Frontier	Purple	John A. Macdonald	The Canadian passenger train	2013	7 November 2013
Commemorative issue	Purple	John A. Macdonald, George-Étienne Cartier, Agnes MacPhail, James Gladstone	Variety of Canadian vistas	2017	1 June 2017
Vertical	Purple	Viola Desmond	Canadian Museum for Human Rights	2018	19 November 2018

Notes

1. Two other women members of the Canadian royal family—Queen Mary and her daughter, Princess Mary, Princess Royal and Countess of Harewood—appeared on the 1935 Canadian banknote series.^[1][2] However, the concept of a Canadian royal family and its members being Canadian was, at the time, in its naissance, the Statute of Westminster 1931 having been enacted only four years earlier.