Viola Desmond, often described as Canada's Rosa Parks for her 1946 decision to sit in a whites-only section of a Nova Scotia movie theatre, will be the first woman to be celebrated on the face of a Canadian banknote.
Finance Minister Bill Morneau says Desmond will grace the front of the $10 bill when the next series goes into circulation in 2018.
Others on the short list were poet E. Pauline Johnson; Elsie MacGill, who received an electrical engineering degree from the University of Toronto in 1927; Quebec suffragette Idola Saint-Jean; and 1928 Olympic medallist Fanny Rosenfeld, a track and field athlete.
Famous Five activist Nellie McClung, the Alberta suffragette who fought in the 1920s for women to be legally recognized as persons in Canada, was for many Canadians the most obvious omission from the short list.
Others who didn't make the cut included "Anne of Green Gables'' author Lucy Maud Montgomery; B.C. artist Emily Carr; and Quebec politician Thérèse Casgrain.
A businesswoman turned civil libertarian, Desmond built a business as a beautician and, through her beauty school, was a mentor to young black women in Nova Scotia.
It was in 1946 when she rejected racial discrimination by sitting in a whites-only section of a New Glasgow movie theatre. She was arrested and fined; her actions inspired later generations of black people in Nova Scotia and the rest of Canada.
But what happens to Sir John A.?
The Bank of Canada plans to have another iconic Canadian on the next $5 bill as well. The Bank is planning to launch another consultation process to find that person.
But what will happen to Canada's first prime minister, Sir John A. Macdonald, and Canada's first francophone prime minister, Sir Wilfrid Laurier?
The bank says they will be bumped up to the $50 and $100 denominations, while the prime ministers currently displayed on those notes, William Lyon Mackenzie King and Sir Robert Borden, will be dumped entirely.
The $20 bill will continue to feature the reigning monarch.