BIOGRAPHY OF

WANDA ROBSON

Wanda Robson was born in Halifax in 1926 to Gwendolyn Irene Davis and James Albert 

Davis.  Wanda attended Sir Charles Tupper, Alexandra School, Bloomfield Junior High. 

and Graduated from Queen Elizabeth High School. In 1943 Wanda began working at 

the Federal Fisheries Research Station on Lower Water St. as a lab assistant. She later 

married and moved to the United States where she lived for 10 years. She divorced 

and returned in 1959 with her three boys to Halifax and work at the Fisheries Lab.  She 

remarried in 1971 and in 1975 moved to North Sydney with her  husband Joe and their 

two children. Wanda first attended UCCB (now Cape Breton University) in 1999 and 

graduated at age 77 with a BA. For the past several years Wanda has been talking to 

school and University students and other groups about her sister Viola Desmond. It 

is mostly due to Wanda’s letter writing that the Province of Nova Scotia posthumously 

granted The Queen’s Royal Prerogative of Mercy Free Pardon to her sister Viola in April 

of 2010.

Wanda is the author of Sister to Courage: Stories from the World of Viola Desmond, 

Canada’s Rosa Parks.

Black Canadian Curriculum – ETFO – 2014