The West End Sex Workers Memorial

The City of Vancouver unveiled The West End Sex Workers Memorial at a ceremony on September 16, 2016. The memorial is dedicated to a diverse community of sex workers in memory of their ongoing struggle for equality. Vancouver activist, Jamie Lee Hamilton (September 20, 1955 - December 23, 2019) initiated the sex worker memorial project in 2008.

Press coverage: West End Sex Workers Memorial

• A Monument to the "Golden Age" of Prostitution? Review of The West End Sex Workers Memorial
  Trip Advisor, February 3, 2022
• The '80s were a turbulent time for Vancouver's West End. Its legacy hides in plain sight
  Global News, December 4, 2021
• Gordon Hardy: Rewriting the history of West End prostitution is 'fevered concoction'
  Vancouver Province, October 3, 2016
• The other side of the West End sex workers' expulsion: Between their clients, the looky-loos and the sex workers, the neighbourhood was far from peaceful
  Xtra! Magazine, September 29, 2016
• West End Sex Workers Memorial
  Qmunity News, September 28, 2016
• West End: The Meaning of a Memorial
  Viewpoint Vancouver, September 22, 2016
• City of Vancouver pulls plug on apology for West End sex workers: City's non-apology at memorial's launch a 'betrayal,' says UBC prof
  Xtra! Magazine, September 22, 2016
• Pete McMartin: Can a neighbourhood be complicit in murder?
  Vancouver Sun, September 20, 2016
• City of Vancouver unveils West End Sex Workers Memorial
  Georgia Straight, September 19, 2016
• Why Sex Workers in Vancouver Received A Civic Apology
  The Naked Truth, September 18, 2016
• West End sex workers honoured with memorial
  Vancouver Sun, September 17, 2016
• Police apologize for kicking sex workers out of West End: New memorial honours sex workers for the first time in Vancouver
  Xtra! Magazine, September 16, 2016
• Sex workers to be honoured with West End monument: 'It's a powerful symbol of our community and the place that we had there,' says Jamie Lee Hamilton
  Xtra! Magazine, September 13, 2016
• Vancouver will commemorate sex workers' ouster from West End
  Georgia Straight, September 7, 2016
• City of Vancouver working on proposed West End sex worker memorial
  Georgia Straight, July 5, 2016
• Sex worker memorial proposed for Vancouver's West End: 'We weren't criminals like they made us out to be,' says Jamie Lee Hamilton
  Xtra! Magazine, November 5, 2015
• Opinion: Sex workers seek apology, reparations
  Vancouver Sun, July 2, 2014
• Hookers on Davie screening tonight
  Xtra! Magazine, June 24, 2014
• Jamie Lee Hamilton can finally declare victory after battling prostitution laws for more than 30 years
  Georgia Straight, December 20, 2013
• Jamie Lee Hamilton: How we can honour murdered and missing women in the wake of Pickton's conviction
  Georgia Straight, August 12, 2010
• Back when the West End had sex worker strolls: Pushing the hookers out 'desexualized and sanitized' the gaybourhood
  Xtra West, June 18, 2009

Memorializing Sex Workers in Vancouver's West End

• Vice in Vancouver's West End: If you lived in Vancouver's West End after 1981 you may not know that street barricades and parklets are a leftover from the West End's prostitution era
  Eve Lazarus, May 6, 2022
• Vancouver Red Umbrella March 2019 Celebrates Its 7th Year! Marchers re-enact historic protest by Alliance for the Safety of Prostitutes 35 years ago
  The Naked Truth, September 15, 2019
• Trudeau government accused of jeopardizing sex workers' safety by refusing to amend Conservative legislation
  Georgia Straight, July 13, 2019
• Activists take to the streets of Downtown Vancouver for seventh annual Red Umbrella March
  City News, June 8, 2019
• Vancouver sex workers will gather in West End for annual Red Umbrella march
  Georgia Straight, June 6, 2019
• PDF: RUM2019 Souvenir History Booklet, Annual Vancouver Red Umbrella March for Sex Work Solidarity, June 8, 2019, Triple-X Workers' Solidarity Association of B.C. © 2019
• Alliance for the Safety of Prostitutes (1981-1987)
  Andy Sorfleet, The Naked Truth, December 16, 2018
• PDF: "Loss Must Be Marked and It Cannot Be Represented": Memorializing Sex Workers in Vancouver's West End. Becki L. Ross and Jamie Lee Hamilton, BC Studies (Issue 197) Spring 2018
• PDF: "Sex (and Evacuation from) the City: The moral and legal regulation of sex workers in Vancouver's West End, 1975-1985," Becki Ross, Intimate Labors: Cultures, Technologies and the Politics of Care. Rhacel Slazar Parreñas, Eileen Boris, eds., Stanford University Press, 2010, pp. 249-263

Jamie Lee Hamilton
(Sept. 20, 1955 - Dec. 23, 2019)

• Sex worker Jamie Lee Hamilton sounded the alarm about Vancouver's missing women
  Globe and Mail, January 8, 2020
• Talk of the Town: Jamie Lee Hamilton
  West End Journal, January 3, 2020
• 'Fierce and undaunted': Vancouver sex workers advocate Jamie Lee Hamilton dies at 64: Hamilton was among the first to sound the alarm that a serial killer was preying on Vancouver sex workers
  Vancouver Sun, December 23, 2019
• Jamie Lee Hamilton remembered as tireless advocate for vulnerable communities
  CTV News, December 23, 2019
• Pioneering sex worker and LGBT rights advocate Jamie Lee Hamilton dies
  Georgia Straight, December 23, 2019
• Controversial Vancouver activist, Jamie Lee Hamilton, dies at 64
  City News 1130, December 23, 2019
• Jamie Lee Hamilton, 'fierce advocate' for Vancouver's sex workers, dies of cancer at 64
  Global News, December 23, 2019
• PDF: Interview Transcript 48, AIDS Activist History Project: Jamie Lee Hamilton interviewed by Gary Kinsman and Alexis Shotwell, September 13, 2016