Since yesterday’s Bank of Canada announcement, Viola Desmond has dominated headlines. Desmond will be featured on the new $10 bill as the first woman to appear on Canadian currency, aside from Queen Elizabth II who will continue to appear on the $20 bill.

Until now, Desmond–who was a black woman from Nova Scotia who refused to leave the whites-only section of a movie theatre in 1946–has been “a curiously little-known part of Canadian history,” reports Maclean’s. To figure out why, Maclean’s reached out to Constance Backhouse, a law professor at the University of Ottawa who has written extensively about Desmond.

Check out the Q&A with Backhouse.

Also read: Overdue: Morneau names first Canadian woman on a banknote