The History of Sex Work in Vancouver, BC (Coast Salish Territory)
1869 -1913 - Canadian legislation concerning procuring went from a single statement in the revised statutes of Canada to a section of the criminal code that incorporated thirteen separate categories of offence.
1873 – Vancouver’s first madam Birdie Stewart sets up shop.
1880 - The federal government decides to regulate against the prostitution of Aboriginal women and "An Act to amend and consolidate the laws respecting Indians" was introduced. The act prohibited the keepers of bawdy houses from allowing Indian women prostitutes on the premises.
1892 – “Keeping” (keeper of a brothel) was an indictable offence subject to one year’s imprisonment. Provisions against being an “inmate”, “frequenter”, and again, the “keeper”, of a brothel were contained in the vagrancy section of the criminal code.
1904 –The segregation of prostitutes into a particular area was an established fact in Vancouver. Dupont (Pender Street) Street was generally recognized, and tolerated as the city’s restricted district.
1906 - Owners of all houses on Dupont Street were given thirty days to put a stop to their activities.
1907 – Stricter measures of law enforcement are reflected in the volume of arrests in late May. 136 women were arrested and 110 were convicted and charged.
1908 – 71 women working in Shanghai and Canton Street (Chinatown) were convicted on prostitution related charges. Brothels were beginning to appear in an increased variety of locations as far west as Granville Street and as far east as Hawks Street.
1912 - Decentralization of prostitution had been established and soliciting arrests began to increase.
1913 – Procuring was defined as the white slave trade, a nationwide conspiracy with international implications, which aimed to turn young women into prostitutes by the use of fraud, persuasion, or drugs.
Tenants, occupiers and landlords could be prosecuted under summary jurisdiction if they allowed premises to be used as a “disorderly house”.
1914 – Crisis in domestic service began with the depression accompanying World War 1. Even though the financial depression may have affected women’s earnings, prostitution was an occupation that did not pose the lingering threat of unemployment.
1920 – 1947 – The social Gospel movement was waning and the sex industry went on largely unabated for the next 40 years.
1947 – Maximum sentences for “keepers” and “inmates” of prostitution were increased to 3 years and a new charge was added for “knowingly transporting another to a bawdy house”.
1950 – Vancouver’s sex industry moves into beer parlours and city hotels with an addition of call girls services.
1960 – It is the era of sex, drugs and rock’n’roll. Big parties, night life and sex were all welcome in our society and sex work flourished.
1972 - Section 175(1) (c), commonly referred to as "Vag. C" and in place since 1867, was repealed and replaced by a soliciting offence (195.1). "Every person who solicits any person in a public place for the purpose of prostitution is guilty of an offence punishable on summary conviction.
1972 - An Ontario County Court (R. v. Patterson) held that males could not be prostitutes.
1973 - The B.C. Supreme Court (R. v. Obey) held that males could be prostitutes.
1973 - The terms "male prostitute" and "male prostitution" were first applied in the federal courts of British Columbia, where, in a precedent-setting ruling, a male sex worker (dressed as a woman) was first convicted of prostitution.
Mid 1970's - There was a noticeable increase in male street sex workers in Vancouver, with estimates of 200 adult and younger male sex workers in the downtown area on a regular or part-time basis.
1975 - Police raid Seymour Streets Penthouse Cabaret; they forced dozens of indoor sex workers onto the city’s streets. This was, hindsight reveals, a lethal mistake. Of all the prostitutes’ homicides in Vancouver history, two occurred before 1975. Since then, however, there have been 114 prostitute murders and fatal disappearances. Of these, 113 of the women worked outdoors.
1975-1980 – Prostitution moves into the West End of Vancouver.
1981 – Gordon Price holds a meeting at the West End Community Centre with concerned citizens and a “Shame the Johns” group is organized. Armed with signs, they began silent vigils to interfere with the sex workers.
1983 - Bill C-127, proclaimed January 4, 1983, made several changes to the Criminal Code:
"Prostitute" now means "a person of either sex engaging in prostitution";
Any person (rather than "any female person") who is not a common prostitute or a person of known immoral character is protected under the procuring section;
Any person (rather than any male person) living on the avails of prostitution is liable;
A person can be convicted of procuring upon the evidence of only one witness.
1983 – Attorney General Brian Smith steps in and orders an injunction that forced the sex workers to move out of the West End or face arrest and prosecution.
1983 - “Hookers on Davie” was made and offered a look into the lives of women working in the West End.
1984 – After being banned from the West End of Vancouver, sex workers relocate east of Granville along Seymour and Richards Street and into Mount Pleasant near Broadway and Main Street.
1984 – Male hustlers set up shop on Homer Street which is currently known as “Boys Town”.
1984 – Transgendered peoples set up shop on Davie Street at Seymour Street.
1985 – Bill C-49 was introduced, repealing the solicitation law. The new section under 213 in the Criminal Code of Canada criminalized communication, “for the purpose of prostitution”, between a prostitute and a potential client.
1986 – Special task force created within the VPD intended to discourage street activity and after two summers police reported less prostitution in Mount Pleasant.
1986 - 1987 – Sex workers migrated back to the Downtown Eastside and Strathcona. Displacement continues. Residents of Strathcona are alarmed at the increased traffic in residential areas and offer sex workers a map laying out no-go areas to consider.
1988 – Bill C-15 to increase protection for victims of child sexual abuse and sexually exploited youth. This law was an attempt to make it easier to arrest pimps and increase jail time.
1989 – Evelyn Lau’s book, Runaway is published and gives the community a much needed look into the life of a sexually exploited youth who breaks all the stigmas that are attached to the reasons why a young person enters “the life”.
1989 – John Lowman (SFU Criminologist) was asked by the Federal Government to prepare a report evaluating the impact of Bill C-49, the “communication” law. Lowman concluded that the communication law was doing nothing to decrease the incidence of street prostitution in the city. He also challenged the idea that stiffer sentences was the answer and instead asked the question no one was willing to ask, “if not here, where are sex workers supposed to work?” rather than being displaced from neighbourhood to neighbourhood.
1994-1995 – Highway 16 has been dubbed the Highway of Tears, after at least five First Nations women vanished or were found murdered there. In recent years, more women of Aboriginal ancestry have disappeared, or have been found murdered in this area.
1999 – The Mayor on behalf of the Vancouver Police Board signs a contract with the John Howard Society to operate the Prostitution Offenders Program.
2000 – John Lowman (SFU criminologist) identifies in a report he published, “ a systemic pattern of violence against prostitutes perpetrated by many men, some of whom are serial killers”, meaning not all murders of prostitutes are done by serial killers. Predators target sex workers because they think they can get away with it because our laws and our attitudes make it possible for them to do so.
2001 – Number of missing women in the downtown eastside for over two decades reaches 68. Many sex workers complained that the communicating law and the further displacement of sex workers contributes to these high numbers. Predators were very aware that sex workers did not report acts of violence due to admitting to breaking the communication law.
2001 – December 17 marks the first international day to end violence against sex workers in Vancouver. This event takes place across the globe in over 30 Countries and started in the United States.
2002 – Missing Women’s Task Force calls a press conference to announce officers were beginning to search a farm in Port Coquitlam where evidence was found connecting two of the missing women to the farm.
2002 - VPD statistics show the number of charges laid in prostitution cases in the city jumped from 90 in 1999 to 437 in 2002. Almost all these arrests involved street sex workers and their customers for illegally communicating about sex in public.
2004 - Canadian Coalition of Experiential Women was conceived through the hard work and dedication of Cherry Kingsley and Jannit Rabinovitch. This coalition has representation from experiential women from across Canada and works towards the advancement of equality and human rights of sex workers and to the improvement of their working conditions.
2005 – Pickton has been charged with a total of twenty-seven of the Missing Women’s murders.
2005 – The BC Coalition of Experiential Women officially comes together. The BCCEW was formed out of two meetings in 2002-03 with the original intent of influencing policy and programming for sex workers in housing, detox, health, sports, exiting and enforcement.
2005 – Parliamentary Subcommittee on Prostitution and Solicitation Laws is struck. Their plan is to travel across Canada and investigate what is actually taking place on the streets of the largest cities in Canada.
2006 – The Parliamentary Subcommittee on Prostitution and Solicitation Laws releases its report. No new recommendations have been made and no new legislation has been suggested. This is directly connected to the amount of violence and death suffered by sex workers. The hope is to create a piece of legislation to increase the health and safety of sex workers and to examine the relevance of section 210-213 in the Criminal Code of Canada. It has been suggested that these sections have contributed to violence experienced by sex workers.
2006 – The BC Coalition of Experiential men is officially formed. It is the mandate of the BCCEM to further the efforts put forth by the BCCEW in implementing programming and supports for the male and trangendered experiential populations.
2006 – BCCEW releases its report, From the Curb "Sex Workers Perspectives on Violence and Domestic Trafficking.
2006 – Raids took place in Burnaby, Coquitlam, Surrey, Richmond and Vancouver. 108 arrests were made. Out of those arrested, 26 people were clients found inside the parlors, 78 women of Asian and South Asian descent have been questioned.
2006 – Vancouver Coastal Health Authority opens taking Care of Business which is a drop-in catering to transgendered sex workers in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver.
2006 – - "Under the Radar: The Sexual Exploitation of Young Men in B.C." by Dr. Sue McIntyre is released. This is the first study done in BC that's sole focus was on the sexual exploitation of young men.
2007 – "Pinky," Zhe Nai Xu, the alleged No. 1 pimp in the Lower Mainland was busted for operating a number of residential bawdy houses.
Sources:
Red Light Neon, Daniel Francis, 2006, ISBN 0-9736675-2-4
‘In Her Own Right’: The Social Evil, Prostitution in Vancouver, 1900-1920, Deborah Nilsen, 1980
www.rapereliefshelter.bc.ca/herstory/rr_files86.html
Susan Davis – The History of Sex Work Project, SFU
