African Nova Scotians: 20th Century Canadian Legacies

She decided: “I’m going to take my show on the road.

I’m going to take a weekend.”

She had a lot of orders, mail orders, so she thought: “I would deliver them

and take some of my products, take a weekend off

while I’m traveling through Nova Scotia.”

So she said she was going to go to Truro, New Glasgow,

and eventually to Sydney and then she’d work her way back.

So when she gets near,

just inside of New Glasgow, she hears a noise in her car.

And she stops at the garage. And he says, oh he could fix it,

but he would have to order a part and she’d have to stay overnight,

because the part wouldn’t be in until the next morning.

So she got out of the car and went down the main street

into New Glasgow and stopped and looked and there was a sign,

at the movie theatre.

So she went up to the cashier, and she said: “I’ll have one ticket down please.”

So the woman looked at her. Okay. And gave her a ticket.

Viola went in on the lower… in the foyer and sat down.

A few minutes later, the usher, a female, she said to her,

“Miss, Miss, you can’t sit here, this is the wrong seat.”

So Viola said: “Oh, okay, I’ll go and get the right ticket.”

So Viola went back to the cashier and she said:

“I’d like to change this ticket for a ticket downstairs.”

And the girl, cashier looked at her

and she said: “We’re not allowed to sell downstairs tickets to you people.”

Viola said: “Hum. Oh!”

Finally, she said: “Oh! I see what she means.”

Well she said: “I’m sorry, there’s the money,

I’m sitting where I have to sit, my eyesight’s not that great,

I like to sit close in the movies.”

She went down and sat down again.

The usher came and said the same thing to her:

“You’ll have to move and if you don’t move, we’ll get the manager.”

Viola said: “No, I’m sorry, I’m sitting down here.

You’ll have to get the manager”, she said.

She got the manager

and he said: “You were told that you can’t sit here. Now you’ll have to move.“

Viola said: “I’m not causing a disturbance.

I offered the money, the difference in the change.

It was refused. It’s there. I’m staying here!”

He said: “Well, I’ll have to get a policeman.”

She said: “Get a policeman. I’m not doing anything wrong.”

He got the policeman and they asked her one last time: “Are you going to move?”

She said: “No!”

So one took one arm and one took the other.

And you realise, this woman is like 95 pounds

and it’s really difficult to get her out to drag her out down the aisle

and she lost, one shoe came off and her purse dropped to the floor.

When they got outside,

the manager went for a…

to the courthouse to get an order for her arrest.

And the policeman got a taxi and took her to the jail.

I said: “Well how long were you in there?”

She said: “They tell me it was twelve hours.”

So in the morning, they came…

they, meaning the manager of the theatre

and the policeman and they took her to the courthouse.

So she said: “I thought I could go in and say I didn’t do anything,

I offered the money. I could just tell them

and they’d say there’s been a mistake here. You know, you can go.”

“Oh, it wasn’t like that”, she said:

And it was like: “Did you, or did you not, or did you?”

And I would say: “Yes, but. But never got any further than Yes… but.”

“And I was found guilty of defrauding, of trying to evade the tax amount

on the difference of the tax between the balcony and the downstairs.”

The difference, what she didn’t pay was only one cent.

So she was offered an opportunity to

pay the fine of twenty dollars, plus six dollars,

or go to jail for thirty days.

She thought about it and she said: “but I wanted, I wanted to take the jail.

I wanted to go to jail to prove that this was a fraud. This wasn’t right.”

But she said: “I had so many people waiting for me and depending on me,

I’ve got to go back home.”

So she got in the car,

turned the car around,

and started back for Halifax from New Glasgow.