During the 1960s, many sex workers had worked in the West End neighborhood in Vancouver. They formed a safe community and supported and took care of each other. Some West End residents objected to their presence and worked to evict them from the neighborhood. The city began to penalize sex workers in 1982, collecting $28,000. In July 1984, B.C. Supreme Court ruled that prostitution was not allowed in the West End. The sex workers left for different neighborhoods, their community, and the supporting system fell apart, making them more vulnerable to crimes against them.
Commemorating the sex workers who got evicted from the West End neighborhood in July 1984 in a memorial was the idea of activist and former sex worker Jamie Lee Hamilton and UBC professor Becki Ross. They founded the memorial committee in 2008 and worked with the City of Vancouver and St. Paul’s Anglican Church to create and fund the memorial. The city paid for the cost, which symbiotically was $28,000.
The memorial was dedicated on September 16th, 2016. It is a Victorian-style light-post with a red lightbulb, the color of solidarity within sex worker circles. Each side of the base has a different inscription – “Dedicated to a diverse community of sex workers,” “In memory of their ongoing struggles for equality,” “People who lived and worked here from the mid-1960s-1984,” and “Today, we commemorate and honour their lives.” It stands outside St. Paul’s Anglican Church, which always supported the sex workers and was involved in the memorial’s creation.
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