The unrepenTanT whore - National Magazine Awards

the walrus � june 2010

society

The
unrepentant

whore

How Jamie Lee Hamilton changed the
way we look at Canada’s underclass

by Michael Harris
Photograph by Shannon Mendes

ne day in the deep end of winter, 1998, it
rained on Vancouver’s City Hall. It rained
on the 6.9 Mercedes that pulled up to the
entrance a little before noon. It rained on
Jamie Lee Hamilton’s good swing coat as
she emerged from the car and lugged out
four bulging garbage bags. It rained on
the fourteen media crews that watched
her carry the bags up the steps, hair plas-
tered to her face. It rained on all of them as she dumped sixty-
seven pairs of stilettos at the city’s feet — one for every woman
who she believed had gone missing from the Downtown Eastside. 
Nobody knew that this was the start of the largest serial killer
case in Canada’s history; nor that Robert Pickton was still, then,
taking women back to his pig farm on the outskirts of the city to
mutilate and murder them; nor that, more than a decade later, in
2009, a constitutional appeal would argue that our country had
systematically imperilled the lives of these women with brutal laws
that forced them to work in untenable conditions. All Hamilton
knew was that women — sex workers — were disappearing and
nothing was being done.

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Michael Harris � The unrepentant whore

Jamie Lee Hamilton at Queens Cross, Vancouver, March 2010
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the walrus � june 2010

If missing women are silenced women, Hamilton has made called in. Fifteen minutes later, when the boy poked his head

it her mission to be fully present and accounted for. An aborig- around the door again, he found her in tears. 

inal, transsexual sex worker from one of the country’s poorest It could have been worse. Homosexuality was legalized in

neighbourhoods, she’s a kind of activist polyglot, able to speak Canada that year, so instead of undergoing therapeutic “cures”

with whatever voice best suits the situation. She presents as (the sexual equivalent of an exorcism, and about as useful)

insistently at ease, adding “dear” and “honey” to her sen- Jimmy rode the bus from his housing project out to the Uni-

tences like dollops of crème fraîche. Still, mention her name, versity of British Columbia, where his counselling sessions

and journalists, politicos, and armchair commentators turtle were videotaped for research purposes by Dr. William Mau-

in their heads with alternating fear and exasperation: she’s rice in a room next to a daycare for psychiatric patients. Look-

­infamous for her public and embarrassing arguments with ing around, Jimmy asked his doctor, “Am I crazy? ” 

a­ nyone who crosses her. (Even one of her fiercest supporters

told me, “You’d be safer writing a profile of a Mafia don.”)

“I say the statePerhaps that’s why her letters requesting a meeting with the
mayor had been ignored, leaving her no choice but to show up created the
at City Hall in person — and her person can be as intimidat- killing fields of
ing as her reputation. Her face is hearty and galvanized with
energy, the strength of her shoulders set off against plunging
necklines. When Mayor Philip Owen emerged, she picked up
a red sequined stiletto to present to him, thinking she could ask

the Downtownfor a meeting in front of rolling cameras. Owen bolted.  
Following this initial embarrassment, she pitched a tent on Eastside.” People tend to
the lawn of City Hall and slept there until, a few days later, it roll their eyes
went missing. When she reported the theft from a phone inside But shewhen she makes
the building, the police asked, “Do you have any suspects? ” such accusations.
Yes, she said in her gravelly voice: Mayor Philip Owen. City
Hall gave her back the tent. But still no meeting. never had the

Her final stand was soon afterward, on February 3, when
she walked into a council meeting (having neglected to pro-

luxury of beingceed through the required channels) and demanded an audi-
ence. The room emptied. But she stood at the mike for hours, politically
anyway, waiting for a response. Once the media caught a whiff neutral.
of “Crazy Shoe Lady, Part Three,” city manager Ken Dobell
delivered the news: “Okay, you’ve got your meeting.” 

“You’re just the top city bureaucrat,” returned Hamilton.

“You get the mayor in his seat, on-camera, telling me I’ve got

a meeting.” So Owen did, and the struggle of sexual outliers

had a new poster child. “No,” said Maurice, “and don’t let anyone tell you it’s

wrong.”

Jimmy became the first boy in Canada to be medically

n 1969, while a team of drag queens sanctioned with a female identity — not that it made any dif-

and friends rioted against police at ference at school. He was called “fag,” “fairy,” and “freak”

New York’s Stonewall Inn, sparking by his schoolmates; phys ed classes, where he was forced to

the North American gay rights move- shower with boys, were particularly painful and alien. Jimmy’s

ment, Jimmy Hamilton was a confused s­ olution was simply to stop going. He had heard there was a

thirteen-year-old living in a Down- burgeoning gay scene on the Granville strip, in particular at the

town Eastside housing project. His White Lunch cafeteria (supposedly thus named to assure cus-

father — a union man who had worked tomers they didn’t use Chinese cooks). There, he met five co-

at a foundry until silicosis of the lungs forced him into part- conspirators, all about fifteen years old.

time work as a janitor at a burger joint — was furious that his One of his new friends told him about turning tricks beneath

son had turned out to be a “sissy.” His mother, the revered the stately Birks clock at Granville and Georgia. When Jimmy

a­ boriginal rights activist Alice Hamilton, took him to the REACH hit the hot spot, a pleasant man in his fifties rolled up and

Community Health Centre, where a doctor asked Jimmy, “Do offered to pay for a blow job. They did the deed in the nearby

you think you’re homosexual? ”  Drake Steam Baths. “Easiest money I had ever made,” Ham-

Blink. “What do you mean? ”  ilton says, and growing up in the projects, easy was something

“Well,” he said, searching for some delicate definition, “do money had never been before. He started hustling regularly:

you feel like a girl? ” he could score forty bucks for oral or a hand job dressed as a

“Oh, yes,” Jimmy said, and was sent out. His mother was boy, and double that if he was dressed as a girl.

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Michael Harris � The unrepentant whore

The six friends would pool their resources and rent a room On the right side of Price’s line in the sand: the West End’s
at the Palms Hotel, where they could practise applying make- thriving gay community, which had moved with breath-
up and walking in high heels; then they’d head over to the taking speed toward empowerment since 1969. Fourteen
White Lunch to flirt and pick up men. Because transexual sex years later, the gay bookstore Little Sister’s and AIDS Van-
workers are rare, they become a coveted, precious commodity. couver, two t­otems of political will, came to life; by 1985, the
They become, often for the first time in their lives, ­beloved city even had a gay newspaper. Homosexuals were real cit-
for who they are. The manager of the White Lunch, Molly, izens, and capable of pushing other minorities around. Ham-
was not such an admirer. “You girls are dressing far too slutty,” ilton, who’d started on hormone therapy in 1977, thereby
she finally spat. “You can’t come in here till you learn how to slowly and permanently distinguishing herself from the drag
dress like proper ladies.” queens, remembers being barred from performing at one gay
bar. Sex workers, meanwhile, were seen as “vermin that had to
The kids bridled at being ousted from the tiny space they’d be exterminated,” says Becki Ross, chair of the Women’s and
carved out for themselves. They retreated to the Palms to plot Gender Studies Department at ubc. “They had to be removed
their revenge. Ambushing the White Lunch dressed in even to give people a sense they were living in a ‘contamination-
sluttier clothes — fishnet stockings, micro-miniskirts, loudest free zone.’ ”
possible makeup — they lined up at the counter, reached their
hands past the sneeze guard like a team of ballerinas at r­ehearsal, The pressure from residents grew to such a fever pitch that
and stuck their fingers into a corresponding line of pies. it finally resulted in a 1984 injunction by BC Supreme Court
chief justice Allan McEachern; hundreds of sex workers were
ehind any individual life looms pushed out of the West End and, pursued by the communi-
a whorl of politics. In 1972, the va- cation law, into increasingly desolate spaces, until they were
grancy law, outlawing pretty much finally allowed to rest in the industrial no man’s land of the
all street life, was deemed a relic of Downtown Eastside. Since it had last been Hamilton’s regu-
ancient morality and replaced with lar haunt, the city’s central library, an Eaton’s, and several
what’s called the soliciting law, which offices had closed up shop, leaving a hole filled by deinstitu-
meant sex-oriented vagrants could still tionalized psychiatric patients, whose presence encouraged
be shuffled along. Hunky-dory, said a street-based drug trade, which in turn promoted theft and
the police. Fine, said the residents of aspirational neighbour- violent crime.
hoods. Then, in 1978, the Supreme Court redefined soliciting
as pressing or persistent behaviour; simply saying, “Want a Pushing prostitutes there consolidated the city’s undesirables
date? ” didn’t qualify.  into one messy (yet handily avoidable) package. “There was no
This proved problematic, since the murder of a twelve-year- precedent for this in Western jurisprudence,” says Ross. And
old shoeshine boy in an apartment above a Yonge Street body yet she points out that no one notable in the labour movement,
rub parlour the year before had prompted raids of massage par- the feminist movement, or the gay rights movement stepped
lours in Toronto. (There had been similar campaigns in Van- forward to protect sex workers. Ross’s research has led her to
couver even earlier.) Masses of sex workers were pushed onto believe that their unchallenged relocation was the seedbed of
the street. Needing a legal mechanism to shoo them, the gov- the scores of Pickton murders that followed.
ernment passed the communication law in 1985, which crim-
inalized any communication for the purposes of prostitution say the state created the killing
in a public place (including cars). fields of the Downtown Eastside,”
It was the end of what Hamilton calls “the golden age of declares Hamilton, upping the ante,
prostitution.” By night, she would dress up as Cher and per- as ever. People tend to roll their eyes
form “Gypsies, Tramps, and Thieves” for audiences at a down- when she makes such accusations.
town Vancouver gay bar called BJs. By late night, she would But she never had the luxury of be-
join hundreds of other sex workers strolling the West End, a ing politically neutral. When Expo
pimp-free “drive-in brothel” where transexuals, boys, and came in 1986, she organized protests
“fish” (biological women) could look out for one another and against the displacement of those in low-income housing; she
­openly ply their trade. founded a sub-local of the Canadian Union of Public Employ-
Gordon Price, the director of the City Program at Simon ees, as well as a hot meal program and food bank for trans­
Fraser University, was then leading CROWE (Concerned Resi- sexuals. She became a Native Princess, a Ms. Gay Vancouver,
dents of the West End) in the push to remove sex workers, and and, inevitably, an honorary member of the travelling cast of
he remembers things differently. There were pimps, he says, A Chorus Line.
dangerous ones, and everyone from schoolchildren to grand- In the fall of 1996, Hamilton entered the municipal election
mothers was being solicited. Price becomes highly excitable race, winning herself pride of place as the first transsexual per-
when he discusses the past. “A new status quo, with sex work- son in Canada to run for public office. When she didn’t win
ers working happily among residents, simply was not an op- the seat, she used her connections to open a now-infamous
tion,” he says. “It was us or them.” safe space on Hastings Street called Grandma’s House, where
sex workers could stop in to warm up, grab a coffee and spare

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the walrus � june 2010

clothing, and use the Internet. Angel funding came from two small group of politicians who are starting to recognize this
society women, Jacqui Cohen (heiress of the Army & Navy essentially useless voting demographic. “The laws we have
discount chain) and Cynnie Woodward (of the department are not protecting sex workers,” she says. (Indeed, Hamilton
store family). Provincial and city governments backed her has a list of twenty-five women she claims have gone missing
with “about $27,000” each year. since Pickton was arrested; it’s increasingly likely there are
more killers like him.) “The key point is this: I don’t believe
But not even the beleaguered DTES community would put the state should be involved in shutting down consensual sex-
up with what it perceived as sanctioned sex work in its front ual activities between adults, whether money is involved or
yard. The local business association drove the outfit to a nearby not. The state should only be involved where there’s violence
residential street, where it again incurred the wrath of ­locals. or exploitation.” 
Someone started making anonymous death threats on the
phone. (When Hamilton alerted the police, the officer who Leading the charge to keep the state out of prostitutes’ bed-
came by said, “If I had a place like this in my neighbourhood, rooms is Alan Young, the gregarious, mustachioed Toronto
I don’t think I’d be happy about it either.”) lawyer who argued before the Superior Court of Ontario last
year that Canada’s laws deny sex workers the safety they are
She was staffing Grandma’s House one night when, at four entitled to under the Constitution. Grandma’s House was front
in the morning, a slight aboriginal woman arrived with a pair and centre in his case. “Jamie created a safe house among the
of guys, drunk off their asses. A third was waiting in the car lowest of the low, and they shut ’em down,” he says. “I ­needed
outside. “I’ve got nowhere to go,” she said, eyes saucer wide. to show the judge that even when you took measures to protect
“Can I do this in one of the rooms here? ” Hamilton was per- yourself, the law will sanction you. If the law prevents people
fectly aware of the bawdy house law that made that an illegal from protecting themselves, that’s not the law.”
option (it was introduced with the vagrancy law in the late
nineteenth century). But she decided that sending this woman Whatever the outcome of Young’s case, it will be appealed
­into a car with three overheated men wasn’t an ethical option: and appealed again. But it’s the start of a multi-tiered approach,
“She’d have been violated. We knew by then there was a serial and after the preliminary fury of grassroots activism like Ham-
killer on the prowl, and I just couldn’t send her away.” ilton’s it’s only with the collaboration of suits like Young and
Davies that real change can occur. Davies points to Vancou-
Over the next few months, at the height of Hamilton’s ver’s drug policy (which has pioneered safe injection sites) as
c­ elebrity (thanks to her antics at City Hall), rumours surfaced a model for future work with the sex industry: “You’ve got
that other working girls were servicing johns at Grandma’s academics, bureaucrats, elected people, drug users, West Side
House, and government funding was pulled in January of parents, and people in the media all in on the conversation.
2000. One day that August, Hamilton was stepping into a cab, When they all converged on drug issues, it became something
en route to a radio interview with CKNW, when she was ar- very powerful. The problem is that it’s a much more fractious
rested on the sidewalk, charged with running a bawdy house. proposition once you start talking about sex.”
After eight hours, she was released on the condition that she
­shutter Grandma’s House. You only have to look at the politically correct (and horribly
cumbersome) string of letters that labels the LGBTTIQQ2S com-
Hamilton is, famously, “an unrepentant whore.” Is she also munity to know she’s right. And it’s almost taken for granted
an unrepentant madam? Sitting with her recently, I ask point- that gay men would break away from so much baggage. Why
blank, “So, were you running a bawdy house? ” She looks non- would they be concerned that sex workers are being mur-
plussed: “Well, yeah.” A hand flicks at some imaginary dirt on dered, or that transsexuals are still not explicitly protected
a cushion. “But so is every five-star hotel in this country. from discrimination anywhere in Canada except the North-
west Territories? Well, maybe because it’s not just hypocritical
“And you know what I really resented? They called it a to desert another minority after you’ve gained your own civil
common bawdy house. Listen, there was nothing common rights; it’s impolitic, too.
about it.”
We gay folk may consider ourselves beyond the struggles
f Hamilton gets her way, of course, of a person like Jamie Lee Hamilton (happily consuming our
bawdy houses will become common, Will & Grace and purchasing our same-sex wedding cards with
and some wonder whether the sex pride). But consider that while we report feelings of safety to
trade will be hurt by the trappings of our friends at Statistics Canada, the numbers tell us homo-
legitimacy, such as income tax and EI sexuals are still two to four times more likely to be victims
premiums. To some extent, minorities of violent crime. Nor has the wholesale absorption of hetero-
are ruined by their success; civil lib- normative marriage rights taken place: in the last census, only
erties denude civil righteousness. For 7,460 people nationwide identified themselves as being part
better or worse, though, the long-distance destination for sex of a same-sex marriage. In the US, Maine’s population re-
workers appears to be homogenization. The police, at least, cently approved a referendum overturning a same-sex mar-
are less interested in persecuting them. Between 1998 and riage law; around the same time, New York and New Jersey
2008, total prostitution charges in Canada plummeted from both opted to disallow gay marriage. People change ­quickly
5,950 down to 2,535. (their minds, their genitals, whatever), but public opinion
And Libby Davies, MP for Vancouver East, is among a turns like a freighter.

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Michael Harris � The unrepentant whore

Sin of Omission When the New York State senate was preparing to vote
on the rights of its gay constituents, straight senator Diane
BY Jacob Mcarthur Mooney Savino — a supporter of same-sex marriage — said to her gay
colleague, Senator Tom Dwayne, “My only hope, Tom, is
that . . . we can learn from you, and that you don’t learn from
us.” What she may have been getting at is that there’s value,
i­rreplaceable value, in the minority experience. That the sec-
tion of society that most discomfits the masses is precisely the
one that can teach us something about the social hierarchy by
which we all benefit and suffer to varying degrees.

The more time I spend with Hamilton, the more her mul-
tiple statuses (transsexual, sex worker, aboriginal, work-
ing class) appear to slip over my vision, like those successive
lenses at the eye doctor’s that finally bring the lowest letters
into focus.

The priest n Kingsway, the street that defies
was Haitian and unpopular, sent Vancouver’s grid system and runs at a
from Halifax to lift the disruptive angle across town, Hamil-
church’s sinking numbers. ton has furnished a second-floor space
Someone made a joke about with all the accoutrement necessary to
colonialism. create her idea of a community cen-
Someone made a joke about tre for trans women and their admirers.
how he choked on certain words: The door to Queens Cross is marked
roshery , Simmeritin, with the street address 1874½ — a Harry Potter–esque nod to
Good  instead of God. the unregulated spaces in between.
He liked his vestments arranged My eyes have to adjust to the dim lighting. Hamilton — 
in a reliable order, would a proud shopkeep — sits behind a cash register in a vestibule.
reach for them blindly, one Normally, men pay a $20 entrance fee to socialize here. She
finger on his scripture. gives me a free pass (it’s a weekday, and ­early in the even-
He had me come in early to ing, so we’re alone anyway). We lounge by candlelight on
heat and light the room, dust overstuffed white leather sofas. Around us, there are numer-
the Christ-bearing frames ous mannequin heads sporting wigs. At the rear, I see a room
of the Passion. On the Sunday with a massage table, and there’s a video room to the left. The
of the crash, he space drips with makeshift sensuality, but “it operates within
decided not to mention it, said city guidelines,” she assures me.
Those people Hamilton is at ease in her boudoir, her legs curled beneath
in the ocean, those people her. She’s finally given up on a career in politics, after three
are not us. further failed attempts at public office in 1999, 2000, and 2008.
She tells me she won’t run again, because her sex work will
always be used against her. “They’d only want me if I said
I was reformed. But I’m not reformed. Listen, I’m fifty-four
and can still work in the sex industry. I’m glad.” Her political
will is too brazen, too tart, in any case, for her to serve in
milquetoast council chambers. When a certain feminist group
recently decided to inform Hamilton of her own safety inter-
ests, she told them the same thing she used to tell pimps who
tried to work their way into the West End strolls: “If you r­eally
want to be an expert, you need to go home, put on a dress, and
come suck some cock.”
I ask her whether she considers herself lonely in her iden-
tity. Is she, hovering there at the multi-hued hub of her own
Venn diagram, a minority among minorities? She studies the
flame from a red candle, then starts to answer: “You know, I
just live my life . . . ” It’s no more complicated than that.

“Be a gentleman,” she urges, “and walk me to my bus stop.”

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