Simon Little

Jamie Lee Hamilton, 'fierce advocate' for Vancouver's sex workers, dies of cancer at 64

One of B.C.'s most vocal advocates for the province's sex workers and transgender community lost her battle with cancer on Monday.

Jamie Lee Hamilton, an often polarizing figure, was 64.

Hamilton is remembered as the first openly transgender person to run for political office in Canada, though her groundbreaking run for Vancouver city council in 1996 wasn't her last election.

"She loved to laugh. She loved to have fun. But she also was a very fierce advocate for the things that she believed in," friend David C. Jones told Global News.

"She kept everyone in check if you were straying down the wrong path. She was an advocate against the Pride Society for getting too commercialized; she rattled a lot of cages," he added.

"There were some people who found her too challenging or too confrontational and other people who were they glad they had her in their corner."

Hamilton was one of the earliest and most consistent voices sounding the alarm about sex workers and women who were vanishing from the Downtown Eastside in the late 1980s and 1990s.

In 1998, "she delivered 67 high-heeled shoes to count for the 67 missing people, missing women and sex workers, and she dumped them on the front steps of city hall going, 'These women mattered,'" said Jones.

It wasn't until 2002 that serial killer Robert 'Willy' Pickton was charged with murder, after the DNA of 33 women was found on his Port Coquitlam property.

Hamilton also worked to counsel and support the city's sex workers, opening a venue called Grandma's House in 1997, which functioned as a safe space for DTES women and sex workers.

Police later shut the venue down and charged her with running a brothel, though the charges were later stayed.

Later in life, Hamilton was instrumental in spearheading the creation of a sex workers' memorial in Vancouver's West End in 2016.

The memorial commemorates the sex workers who populated the neighbourhood from the mid 1970s to the mid 1980s, before a B.C. Supreme Court ruling supported by the city's mayor and provincial government saw them forced out.

Hamilton was also a strong advocate of the city's park system, running in 2008 for the Vancouver Park Board as an independent, and adding her voice to the debate about Oppenheimer Park right up until the end of her life.

Memories and condolences to Hamilton have been pouring in over social media.

"She was heavily involved in civic life advocating for missing women, as well as running for office. She was also a staunch defender of parks & a regular at our Park Board meetings," wrote Vancouver City Coun. Sarah Kirby-Yung.

Former NDP MP Svend Robinson described her as a "force of nature," and called for a continuation of her mission to ensure sex workers are treated with dignity and respect.

Fomer B.C. attorney general and Vancouver city councillor Suzanne Anton called her a "terrific community advocate," and lauded Hamilton's efforts to see an investigation into the city's missing and murdered women.

Jones said friends and supporters are currently working on a memorial for her.