BEAVER / CASH Media Chronology

"Inspired by COYOTE, the San Francisco prostitutes' rights group, BEAVER was the first sex workers' rights group (made up mainly of strippers) in Canada. With the help of other people in the biz, including Gwendolyn and Maxine, Baba Yaga brought the sex workers' rights perspective to the public for the first time. BEAVER was eager to build bridges with feminists…"
– A Brief History Of Sex Worker Activism in Toronto (Sex Workers' Alliance of Toronto brochure, 1995)

Formation of BEAVER news conference, November 25, 1977

• Taking it off: A strip act with a difference, Anne McLean, Branching Out: Canadian Magazine for Women, September/October, 1977 (Edmonton)
  "The workshop was held on a weekend in February, in a women's centre in Toronto. Half a dozen women were there. Some at first were very nervous about the whole thing: it wasn't your typical women's movement function. Some had met Margaret at a women's conference in Ottawa a few months earlier. There she had performed a strip act for an audience of women, on a stage constructed out of two tables pulled together. She had talked while she took her clothes off."
• Hookers fight back," Judy Ramirez, Wages for Housework Campaign Bulletin, Toronto, Canada Vol. 2 No. 1 Fall 1977
  "In 1975 the Ontario Appeal Court acquitted Ottawa prostitute Louise Rolland on the grounds that her wink to a prospective customer did not constitute 'soliciting.' …
  "…In recent months, mock street trials were held in S.F., Los Angeles, and Boston, which accused Government and business of pimping off prostitutes and off the work of all women.
  "The events were attended by hundreds of women, many of whom "testified" from the crowd about their struggle for money. In the Boston trial, Ms. Anonymous Prostitute, speaking for PUMA (Prostitutes' Union of Massachusetts) told the large crowd in the Boston Commons, "My crime is not actually having sex — work which all women are supposed to do for free — but, rather, demanding money for it."
  "The Wages for Housework Campaign fully supports these demands and announces the upcoming visit of Margo St. James, of COYOTE (Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics) to Toronto! Housewives and hookers will be making a common cause Nov. 25-30 in a series of public events."
• Housewives group backs prostitution: More money for women, Toronto Star, November 26, 1977
  "…spokesperson for Wages for Housework …Judith Ramirez was speaking at a news conference called yesterday to announce the formation of BEAVER (Better End All Vicious Erotic Repression) …Baba Yaga, a former Toronto stripper and founder of BEAVER, and her American counterpart Margo St. James, an ex-hooker who founded COYOTE (Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics), plan to speak at universities and colleges next week. …Ms St. James and Ms Ramirez will take part in a panel discussion Nov. 30 at the St. Lawrence Centre Town Hall with Toronto Alderman Pat Sheppard and lawyer Morris Manning, special prosecutor responsible for closing many sex shots on Yonge St."
• Prostitutes to oppose government oppression, Ottawa Citizen, December 10, 1977
  "A former stripper and prostitute [Baba Yaga] says a Canadian organization has been formed to fight government attempts to take way prostitutes' rights to earn money on the streets."
• BEAVER: Decriminalize prostitution or prosecute equally," Margaret Dwight-Spore, Upstream: A Canadian Women's Publication, Vol. 2, No. 7, August 1978 (Ottawa)
  "The Ontario Supreme Court just acquitted Mr. "P" who offered money to a policewoman posing as a hooker. The Court defined the solicitor as the one who receives the money. The British Columbia Court of Appeal recently came to the same conclusion. "The crime," says Margo St. James of COYOTE, "is TAKING THE MONEY. …The Minister of Justice's proposal to amend the Criminal Code on prostitution reverses the progressive Supreme Court decision of D. Hutt, but does not touch the case of Mr. "P." The amendment would prohibit soliciting of any kind (winks, smiles, etc.) in any place and by either sex. The idea behind "by either sex" is to catch homosexual as well as heterosexual hustlers. Most people do not realize that presently a prostitute is defined by common law as a female person or sometimes a man dressed as a woman."
• Hookers organize," Ellen Agger, Wages for Housework Campaign Bulletin, Toronto, Canada Fall 1978
  "…It is all in response to the efforts of BEAVER (Basic Education and Vital Equal Rights) to stir the conscience of the public about the forgotten rights of hookers. …Formed last November, with the blessing of Margo St. James of COYOTE (the San-Francisco based group leading the campaign for decriminalization), BEAVER's aims are to disseminate information about hookers' rights groups all over the world, build a strong lobby for legal change in Canada, and offer assistance and support to individual hookers. …At a St. Lawrence Centre Forum last November, "Prostitution: Where Sex and Class Meet" Judith Ramirez of Wages for Housework took on alderman Pat Sheppard and Allan Sparrow, architects of the Yonge Street 'crackdown.' …BEAVER is currently circulating a brief which calls on the federal government to remove prostitution-related laws from the Criminal Code. …She recently appeared on the popular Lynn Gordon Show, televised nationally, and was a featured speaker at the Festival of Life and Learning" at the University of Manitoba, where she appeared on a panel with co-worker Margo St. James. …write to BEAVER, c/o Wages of Housework"
• Speaking up for our sisters: Decriminalization of prostitution," Margaret Dwight-Spore, Fireweed: A Feminist Quarterly of Writing, Politics, Art & Culture, Issue 1, Autumn 1978 (Toronto) pp. 23-26
  " Any regulations concerning the business must take into account the views and concerns of the workers themselves. Organized advocacy groups such as C.O.Y.O.T.E. (Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics) in San Francisco and P.L.A.N. (Prostitution Laws Are Nonsense) in England are currently studying regulation problems. What works in one country may not work in another. B.E.A.V.E.R. (Better End All Vicious Erotic Repression) is Canada's first organizational voice for prostitutes and other workers of the flesh; and end to the use of non-related legislation (i.e. loitering) to control prostitution. …B.E.A.V.E.R. informs us that they would be happy to offer more information on request. Their address is Box 38, Station "E", Toronto, Ontario."
• Hooker harrassment protested by group, Canadian Press, Ottawa Citizen, March 3, 1979
  "Baba Yaga, organizer of the 30-member Committee Against Street Harassment …The group, formerly known as BEAVER (Better End All Vicious Erotic Repression), plans to present a protesting brief to the Commons justice and legal affairs committee. …the 29-year-old former prostitute who practised the trade for three years before deciding to organize BEAVER in the fall of 1977. …Priscilla Piatt, a Toronto lawyer representing the group"
• Hookers get harassment hotline, Globe and Mail, April 24, 1979
  "The Committee Against Street Harassment, a group seeking to remove prostitution from the Criminal Code, will operate the hotline between 8 p.m. and 4 a.m. Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights. …Lorenne Clark, associate professor in the department of philosophy and the centre of criminology at the University of Toronto …said CASH is neither for nor against prostitution."
• Legal help for women in trouble: Cool response to Hookers' Hotline," Isabella Bardoel, Globe and Mail, September 6, 1979
  "…Last year, 766 men and women in the City of Toronto were charged with soliciting. …The Committee Against Street Harassment and the Toronto Elizabeth Fry Society, two non-profit groups, believe that 90 per cent of all these cases are given fines or probation. They decided to work together on the hotline. …For a first offence a woman cannot get legal aid under the law as it now stands, explained Wendy Hughes, 25, program director for the society. …We depend on community service announcements leaflets passed on the street and word of mouth, Miss Yaga explained. We even pass out our leaflets in women's washrooms. But when we went into the bars downtown — that's where we ran into a lot of problems. There is great hostility there to us — from owners and prostitutes. On one occasion we were thrown out of a downtown hotel."

Drawings for CASH and BEAVER logos. Margaret Dwight-Spore Fonds, Ottawa University Archives

Baba Yaga on the Lynne Gordon Show 1978

Baba Yaga, stripper (aka Margaret Dwight-Spore) appeared on the Lynne Gordon Show on January 25, 1978. Director: D. McGuire. Run time: 26 minutes. Link to Full Transcript.

Baba Yaga on the Lynne Gordon Show, January 25, 1978

Dwight-Spore, Margaret: Biographical history

"Margaret Dwight-Spore was born in the United States but moved in Canada with her husband in 1971. In 1977, she founded Better End All Vicious Erotic Repression (B.E.A.V.E.R), an organization dedicated to decriminalizing prostitution in Canada. Around 1979 BEAVER changed its name to Committee Against Street Harassment (CASH). It offered legal advice, counselling, referrals and support to sex workers and also provided education through public discussion. It was disbanded in the early 1980s. The prostitute's resource office, "Maggie's" founded by sex-workers in the 1980s was name for Dwight-Spore.

"Margaret Dwight-Spore also participated in various workshops and conferences. She was the leader of a University of Concordia seminar on prostitution and pornography, a Conference on Human Sexuality and Freedom workshop leader and a National Action Committee on the Status of Women (NAC) conference prostitution workshop panel participant. In addition to her involvement in conferences and activities, she also worked as a resource person at the Toronto Rape Crisis Centre and the Elizabeth Fry Society and she the focus of an interview published in Fireweed in 1978. In 1985, Margaret Dwight-Spore returned to the United States."

[Source: https://biblio.uottawa.ca/atom/index.php/margaret-dwight-spore-fonds]