Signing up enhances your TCE experience with the ability to save items to your personal reading list, and access the interactive map. Article by Frances M. Published Online October 27, Last Edited June 10, Prostitution is the practice of exchanging sexual services for money or for other needs such as food and shelter. Although prostitution itself has never been a crime in Canada, communicating and other activities relating to the exchange have been prohibited.
Although street-based prostitution is the most visible form and receives the most attention, it represents only a small proportion of the sex industry, which also includes brothels and escort services. There is an ongoing political and social debate about how and whether to decriminalize parts of the trade. Prostitution is not new in Canada's history. Throughout the s, prostitution was organized primarily around brothels.
The houses were grouped together, often sharing their neighbourhood with taverns in the poorer parts of cities. The brothels in Saint John and Halifax provided gambling in addition to sex and alcohol, and were some of the most financially successful houses in the first half of the 19th century. With the development of the transcontinental railways , there was a mass migration westward at the turn of the century. Unlike the early farm families who settled the West, these migrants were mostly single men, either bachelors or husbands who had temporarily left their wives and children at home.
This multitude of single men created an environment in which prostitution flourished. Brothels were located close to railway stations. Unless they came to the attention of social or moral reformers, little was done to close them. The authorities were inclined to feel that prostitution had to be tolerated since it could not be eradicated.
When the North-West Mounted Police did take action, it was usually for reasons unrelated to prostitution laws, such as complaints about the damaging effect on the population or on the railway construction projects, or evidence that those associated with the brothels were involved in other criminal activities.
