Vancouver sex trade workers of the 1980s memorialised
Posted September 16, 2016 7:46 pm.
Last Updated September 16, 2016 7:51 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – A retro lamp post with a red bulb is the newest attraction in Vancouver’s West End—one with a serious purpose.
It’s a memorial to those in the sex trade who worked in the area more than 30 years ago.
A five-block area of Pendrell Street from the top of Mole Hill at Bute Street toward Denman became a battle ground between women, men and young people who sold themselves and a group called Shame the Johns, which wanted prostitutes out of the neighbourhood.
The group’s stated motivation was to protect children.
In 1984, BC Supreme Court chief justice Allan MacEachern ruled the prostitutes were a public nuisance and ordered them to leave the West End. They simply packed up and went to other—and sometimes less safe—areas of the city.
On Friday, an eight-year campaign came to an end with the unveiling of the memorial outside St Paul’s Anglican Church at Pendrell and Jervis Streets, one of the corners where sex workers could be found in the early ’80s.
The city of Vancouver reportedly paid for the memorial; the same city that collected money in fines from prostitutes who worked in that area under a 1982 bylaw.
