Policing Sex Work in Canada: History

Sex work has existed in Canadian towns and cities since before Confederation, and the laws governing it have changed repeatedly. Historical records, especially police files, court documents and booking photographs, give researchers a view of how women in the trade were treated by the justice system. Museums and universities occasionally present such material to the public.

Those records are often the main surviving evidence, and they reflect the priorities of the authorities who created them rather than the voices of the people they describe.

Early legal approaches

In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, selling sex was not itself the main target of the law. Instead, statutes focused on keeping a bawdy house, vagrancy and related public order offences. Women who worked in or ran brothels, often called madams, were charged under these provisions. Western frontier towns, which grew quickly around railways and resource industries, had visible commercial sex trades, and police response varied with local politics and moral campaigns.

Archives as a source

Booking photographs and arrest ledgers survive in provincial and municipal archives. Historians use them to study age, origin, clothing and the kinds of charges laid. Some scholars point out that the images also show individuals who held themselves with composure before the camera, which complicates a simple picture of passivity.

Modern legal developments

Canadian law has continued to evolve. In 2013 the Supreme Court of Canada, in Bedford v. Canada, struck down three Criminal Code provisions on the grounds that they endangered sex workers. Parliament then enacted new legislation in 2014 that criminalized purchasing sexual services and certain related activities, an approach its supporters link to the Nordic model and its critics dispute.

Violence and public memory

Discussion of historical sex work is often linked with present-day concerns about violence against women, including the issues examined by the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. Advocates argue that stigma has long affected how sex workers are treated by authorities, and historical exhibitions are sometimes presented as one way to examine that legacy.