Andrew Weichel

Jamie Lee Hamilton remembered as tireless advocate for vulnerable communities

VANCOUVER – Tributes are pouring in for Jamie Lee Hamilton, a Vancouver community activist who spent her life fighting on behalf of vulnerable populations.

Hamilton moved into the Cottage Hospice earlier this month after being diagnosed with cancer, and died there early Monday morning at the age of 64.

During her decades of activism, she advocated tirelessly for Indigenous peoples, Vancouver's LGBTQ community, at-risk youths and the homeless — but her most important legacy was arguably her crusade for sex workers' rights.

"Jamie was a force of nature," former NDP MP Svend Robinson wrote on Twitter following her death. "Let's keep up her fight for sex workers to be treated with dignity and respect and repeal (Bill C36)."

In 2016, Hamilton's advocacy led to the installation of the West End Sex Workers Memorial, a lamppost dedicated to the sex workers who were purged from the neighbourhood by police and politicians in the early 1980s.

The lamppost, which shines a red light onto Jervis Street, was the first memorial to sex workers installed anywhere in Canada.

"If we all just reach out and support each other, I think that's what's going to make fundamental change in our society," Hamilton told the crowd at an event that year.

Back in 1998, she famously dumped 67 pairs of high-heeled shoes onto the steps of City Hall — one for every missing woman whose disappearance from the DTES had gone unsolved. It would be several more years before police caught the serial killer responsible for most of their deaths.

Hamilton ran for a seat at Vancouver city council in 1996, becoming the first openly transgender Canadian to campaign for office, and ran for park board commissioner 12 years later. Neither bid was successful, but she left her mark in other ways.

Friend Caroline MacGillivray said Hamilton's advocacy helped to gradually alter public perceptions around sex workers and drug users in the city.

"That has changed because of voices like Jamie Lee, who have spoken out when it wasn't cool, when it wasn't hip to do so," MacGillivray said. "She did it with kindness, compassion and a lot of fierceness sometimes — but I think she needed to, especially in that era."

And while Hamilton had some public spats and controversies, MacGillivray said she will always remember her for the way she lifted other people up.

"She's always been really, really almost motherly towards me," she said. "We're very, very lucky that we've had her in Vancouver."

With files from CTV News Vancouver's Jason Pires