West End Sex Workers Memorial

On September 16, 2016, the City of Vancouver unveiled the West End Sex Workers Memorial on Jervis Street in front of the Saint Paul's Anglican Church. The project began 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