There was a time when the streets of Vancouver’s West End were much worse than they are today.
In his latest book, Vancouver Vice, author Aaron Chapman depicts an era that many current Vancouver residents may not be aware of.
“In 1982, there were more murders in the West End than there were in Downtown Eastside,” Chapman said.
Back in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the streets of the West End were home to sex workers, something resembling an unofficial red-light district, according to Chapman.
The area also dealt with violence, drugs, illegal gambling and tensions between police and some of the West End’s LGBTQ2 residents. The era was immortalized in the 1984 documentary Whores on Davie.
Chapman said at the time that there were 200 to 300 sex workers on the streets of the West End on any given night.
“For the neighbors who lived down here, the noise and … coming and going from some of the traffic was constant until three or four in the morning.”
Investigations were made, committees were formed, and meetings were held to address the situation of sex workers and the West End.
The Shame the Johns groups were formed to campaign against sex workers and their clients.
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A shame that the Johns group campaigned against sex workers and their clients.
“They were sometimes called a vigilant group,” Chapman said.
“They wrote down the number of license plates on cars driving around and took pictures of people and stood in the same corners that the sex workers were working on to try to scare customers and scare everyone into pushing this out of the neighborhood. It was like a little civil war that happened here. “
A provincial injunction in 1984 had the effect of pushing sex workers out of the West End and into other parts of the city.
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“During the night, it just emptied the streets,” Chapman said of the injunction. “I was talking to a police officer who said you could have fired a cannon down Davie Street and not hit anyone. There was no one there.”
Today there are few remains from that era. A memorial to West End sex workers stands on Jervis Street.
Another legacy from that time lurks in plain sight, Chapman said. Traffic calming measures were installed in the neighborhood to restrict car traffic in the area.
Chapman said as far back as 1973 that barricades were referred to as legitimate traffic calming measures. When the barricades were installed in 1981, they were introduced as a way to deter sex trafficking.
“Everyone knocked on the city door and asked for an answer,” Chapman said. “When they put these in, they announced that it was apparently to curb the problem of street prostitution that was going on in Vancouver.”
The city put up about half a dozen barricades in 1981, which vary in style. Some, like the one on Nicola and Pendrell streets, are now small parks.
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Chapman notes that the diversions, like so many efforts to combat the sex trade, did not work as intended.
“The only thing it did was slow down the traffic and make it easier for some people in those cars to talk to some of the women on the corners,” he said.
Over the years, some of the traffic divers were spruced up and have become inviting public spaces.
“They become part of the neighborhood that way,” Chapman said. “A lot of people in the West End walk past the curbs and the barricades and the little parks in front of buildings and think, ‘How wonderful, someone decided to cut the street off and put some nice grass and park and some trees in.’
“But the real reason they’re there is a top-secret thing that a lot of people in town probably don’t realize.”
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