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04 - The Other Little House on the Prairie
40 Plays3 months ago
Tracy dives into the history of sex work in the settlement of the Canadian prairies. Here she talks about how sex workers were foundational to the economic and cultural function of early settlements, with special emphasis on Winnipeg, Saskatoon, and Calgary.
Sources and Further Reading
Bourgeois, N. (2018). Race, space, and prostitution: The making of settler colonial Canada. POWER. https://www.powerottawa.ca/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Bourgeois-2018.pdf
Gray, J. H. (1971). Red lights on the prairies. Macmillan of Canada.
Lee, G. (2015, June 17). Prostituted words: Time for a new style guide. Rabble.ca. https://rabble.ca/columnists/prostituted-words-time-new-style-guide/
Nichols, J. (2022). The other little house: The brothel as a colonial institution on the Canadian prairies, 1880–93. Journal of Social History, 56(1), 58–84. https://doi.org/10.1093/jsh/shac014
Stella, l’amie de Maimie. (n.d.). Language matters: Talking about sex work [Information sheet]. Global Network of Sex Work Projects. https://www.nswp.org/sites/default/files/StellaInfoSheetLanguageMatters.pdf
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Transcript
Introduction to 'The Wonder Camera'
00:00:22
Speaker
um Hello, everyone. Welcome to another episode of The Wonder Camera. This is a podcast about curiosity in which three dilettantes, we're not experts, share with you tale of the fascinating.
00:00:36
Speaker
We open up the doors The Wonder Camera and share a fascinating object, something that has occupied or preoccupied us for some time. I am Jen Rumpel. I'm here with Dave Powell and Tracy Anderson Powell.
00:00:48
Speaker
And we are your dilettantes. And we have ah another story for you today. And today's Tracy. Tracy's going to regale us with a tale. Today we're talking about three cities in the Canadian Prairie Provinces. Winnipeg, Manitoba, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, and Calgary, Alberta. We're going to look at their settlement back in the late 19th century and early 20th century.
Personal Connections to Prairie Cities
00:01:09
Speaker
Woohoo! I think. I mean, don't have the most fondness. I've been to Calgary couple times.
00:01:15
Speaker
Never been to Winnipeg or Saskatoon. And I know I've spent a decent amount of time in all three. Ah, OK. Winnipeg is a divisive city, but I think I'm pro Winnipeg.
00:01:26
Speaker
Saskatoon is nicer than it should be. And Calgary is a lovely little city. Yeah, it's nicer than it should be since Saskatchewan. yeah And Calgary, being an Edmonton chauvinist, is the Shelbyville to our Springfield.
00:01:42
Speaker
And although I disdain Calgary, there's also quite a bit to like about the city, too. Yeah, that's right. Including being the origins of Dave. Yes, that's true. Without Calgary, I'd probably be born somewhere else.
00:01:54
Speaker
I mean, makes sense. I was born somewhere else, as was
Perspectives on Sex Work
00:01:58
Speaker
Tracy. yes Also in one of those cities. Most people are born somewhere else, actually. I'm in the minority here. I'm persecuted, I might add.
00:02:06
Speaker
I am from Winnipeg, but I only lived there for the first year or so of my life, so I can't really claim much. I just think of cold and flat places. Have you guys been back?
00:02:17
Speaker
ah Calgary, yes, but back to either? I was in Winnipeg in 1999 for the summer I had originally thought about moving there, but after that summer was up and we, because I was there with a friend after that summer was up and we came back, then the desire to move to Winnipeg was kind of gone. So I went to Edmonton instead. Yeah, fair enough. I've been to Winnipeg a few times and Saskatoon we went to fairly regularly when Tracy's parents were in Saskatchewan.
00:02:47
Speaker
It's part of the pilgrimage. Makes sense. One day I'll go there. Albertans need to do the pilgrimage to Saskatchewan, at least at some point in their life. It's just, don't know, part of the ritual here. It's something you got to do.
00:02:58
Speaker
yeah Alberta culture hour. So yeah, it's interesting. Again, something else that's fascinating.
Sex Work in Prairie Settlement History
00:03:03
Speaker
We did episode about. Yeah. We're speaking up, Tracy. It's ah yeah. So before we start, let's talk about sex, baby.
00:03:10
Speaker
Yay. Sex work specifically. The topic of sex work seems to be divided into two political opinions. The first is that sex work is a form of violence and needs to be abolished, that prostitution is inherently exploitative and violent, that it's something like slavery.
00:03:26
Speaker
The term abolition refers to slavery and frames sex workers as victims. Not only do sex workers not see themselves as victims, but they also consider it trivializing to those who endured slavery.
00:03:37
Speaker
This is what we would call the wrong opinion, mostly. hu I can do agree with that. And the second is that sex work is a legitimate form of work and needs the formal protections that any other job has. Promotion of human and labor rights of sex workers. Here's a quote from Prostituted Words, Time for a New Style Guide by Joyce Arthur.
00:03:57
Speaker
Quote. Their ability to work safely is criminalized, and those laws are also society's way of sending a strong message of moral disapproval for sex work. Such official condemnation is hugely stigmatizing against sex workers. It gives cover for predators to kill, assault, and rape sex workers. It encourages prudes to hate or pity them, and it allows prohibitionists to disrespect them and deny their autonomy. I mean, yeah, where's the lie? That's yeah, that's basically where I am on this is as we go further and I'm sure we can rant about our ah our sort of more nuanced thoughts about sex work.
00:04:32
Speaker
But sex workers deserving respect and dignity, proper labor, labor rights and acceptance and respect in their communities is, I think, absolutely essential.
00:04:43
Speaker
Yeah, it's the bare minimum, right? It's totally reasonable. Yeah. And again, strict prohibition seems to create a lot of issues to drive it underground, whereas decriminalization, you know, it can be regulated and, you know, done safely. It's more harm reductionist.
00:04:59
Speaker
But yes, we'll talk about it more, I'm sure. Today we're combining the two topics, settlement and sex
Historical Language and Perception
00:05:04
Speaker
work. What role does sex work play in the settlement of the Canadian provinces? It's an important piece of history, but one that's not really talked about.
00:05:11
Speaker
Why has there been a neglect by historians of this history? It might be from a, quote, over fastidious reluctance to become involved in nasty business, end quote. Here's a quote from James H. Gray's with Red Lights on the Prairies.
00:05:25
Speaker
This was the zenith of the scruffy age of Balderism, when nothing sexual was ever identified by an Anglo-Saxon noun. Yeah. yeah The zenith of the scruffy age of which?
00:05:38
Speaker
Baudlerism. Baudlerism? Baudlerism? Yeah, Baudlerism. B-A-W-D-L-E-R-I-S-M. Baudlerism, yeah. Yeah, it was like the boulderized version of Shakespeare was where they cut out all the naughty parts. oh Okay. if you can understand Shakespeare, sure, i don't think it's necessary, but anyway. Yeah, it's, you know, anything fun, they excise.
00:06:01
Speaker
I clearly do not understand enough of Shakespeare. But it's so covered up. Like, I mean, it's it's it's fine. Yeah, it's if you, yeah. But yeah, they would do the censored versions because they're prim and proper Victorians, I suppose. Ah, yes. Yeah, but they were actually the rumpy age.
00:06:16
Speaker
So this is the scruffy age of ah this sort of behavior where, again, nothing sexual is is described with an Anglo-Saxon noun. And thus we're using the more ah Norman rooted nouns in English in order to describe ah intimate relations.
00:06:31
Speaker
aha But in practice, as opposed to,
Brothels as Early Establishments
00:06:34
Speaker
you know, fogging. yeah yeah know yeah they were The Victorians actually in practice were freaks. but Oh, yeah.
00:06:42
Speaker
The word prostitute was considered to be too gamey for publications and police records. Nor did they use use the word... Gamey. Yeah, gamey. That implies a scent. Yeah, I'm like... Well, it's bottle too.
00:06:56
Speaker
Nor did they use the words whores, whorehouses, brothels, or bordellos. Instead, they went with the very sanitary inmates and keepers of houses of ill fame. i mean, yeah, that's proper.
00:07:10
Speaker
mean, you know, a sign in the door, body house, right? i don't know. Yeah. Maybe. So let's take a quick look at the sanitized language used by the Calgary Herald in 1907. Two sisters, Helen and Marie Stewart, one a manufactured blonde and the other a thorough brunette, members of the elite sorority of sisters from across Langevin Bridge, were charged with not complying with the law applied to them and were fined $15 each.
00:07:35
Speaker
oh Not complying with the law applied to them. Not complying. Yeah. That is. Sisters of a sorority. it's like It's not even euphemistic. It's just. No.
00:07:48
Speaker
It's just completely opaque. yeah yeah We're charged with illegalities. yeah Yeah, basically. But illegality is too strong a word. Yeah, that's right. And a second example, my favorite one. Hattie Rogers and Maude Copeland, two languid ladies of the red glim variety, were fined $25 and costs for keeping a disreputable
Settlement Challenges and Social Norms
00:08:10
Speaker
house.
00:08:11
Speaker
Four ladyettes, Eva Hall, Blanche Palmer, Martha Saunders, and C. Thomas paid $15. They were unable to appear themselves because the hour of 1030 was very, very early, and they were very, very tired. So they sent lawyer Balache to plead guilty for them. You know what? Good for them.
00:08:30
Speaker
Right? Blanche the ladyette. I'm like, did I hear ladyette? And also, did hear red blum? What was that? glim. What is that? Of the red glim variety.
00:08:41
Speaker
Yeah, i don't I don't know what a glim is Nonetheless, I immediately understand what it means in this context. Yeah, it's about the best I can do with it. And I've never, ever heard the use of the word ladyettes before. I'm not even sure that is a word.
00:08:57
Speaker
Ladyette. Well, it's cute. I like it. glim is a a small light, a candle or lantern. So the red light. okay So they couldn't even say of the red light variety. They had to use. Wow.
00:09:11
Speaker
Cowards. Yeah. Obscure term. Wow. Yeah. Couldn't get up at 1030 for court. I love it. And while we're talking about language, we're going to take a look at the language we use today. Well, in 1971, when Red Lights on the Prairies was published, words like prostitute and whores and whorehouses were completely acceptable. Among workers themselves, working girls was quite popular.
00:09:35
Speaker
Instead of using words like prostitute, hooker, whore or streetwalker, use the term sex worker. The acceptable terms for prostitution are sex work, sex trade and sex industry.
00:09:46
Speaker
Sex workers' rejection of the term is often based on how the public perceives prostitutes and prostitution rather than an inherent shame in the word itself. Yeah, there is a prostitute and prostitution have a sort of seedy pejorative sense to them.
00:10:03
Speaker
Yeah. And it's also, and yeah, it's negative. And also, again, it's a little euphemistic. Sex work is, you know, good Saxon language and is very bluntly telling you what's going on.
00:10:15
Speaker
Yes. This is working the work of sex. It's describing a job, not saying this person is a thing, not identifying them with their job. If
Law Enforcement's Approach to Sex Work
00:10:25
Speaker
you call, oh, you call somebody, you're a prostitute. You know what i mean? I mean, yes, could say you're a lawyer, but.
00:10:30
Speaker
say sex worker, it's that's um prostitution. Women are judged. yeah if looking you dead ligger Yeah. Yeah. It's treated like this kind of may asma that if you belong to it, you're sort of.
00:10:42
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And I get the sorry judgment. It allows for judgments. Yes. yeah No, that makes sense. Yeah. So if you're interested in the language surrounding sex work, please check out the link to language matters talking about sex in the episode notes.
00:10:58
Speaker
However, the word prostitution is acceptable when referring to criminal laws surrounding sex work. So please keep all of this in mind as we proceed with this episode. We will diligently police your language and hit an extremely loud, incorrect buzzer when everyone gets it wrong.
00:11:14
Speaker
All right. act ah That's a good buzzer. and It's kind of like goat, maybe, but that's the hooker buzzer.
00:11:29
Speaker
goat horn. right Look, the buzzer has no feelings. It cannot be heard. Was that goats? Yeah, goats scream like like people. Yeah. Or some goats, anyways. I had a ringtone for notifications for text messages. That was the sound of a goat screaming.
00:11:47
Speaker
And at work, I had my phone in the desk drawer, but I hadn't silenced it. So I'm on the phone with somebody in the middle of this call, and all of a sudden I get a message. And...
00:11:58
Speaker
yeah yeah just like that spine chilling yeah so you did back away from the microphone thank you yeah i'm a good boy Yeah. So the text message, it's not just one. It's not just two. There's a handful of them. Somebody has added me to a group chat that I don't want to be a part of.
00:12:15
Speaker
And my phone is sitting in my desk, screaming away. so while I'm on this call, i open the desk drawer to take out the phone and silence it. And the phone is screaming the whole time. And I feel so bad for whoever was on the other end of that hour Beating your goat phone to death.
00:12:32
Speaker
somebody murdered? Is there, you know, goat slaughter going on? Yeah, goats, people, could be one or the other. All right. So Manitoba joined Canada as the fifth province in 1870. Saskatchewan and Alberta didn't join until 1905.
00:12:48
Speaker
Between 1900 and 1915, more than a million immigrants were lured to the prairie provinces by the government, the railroads, and freelance land agents. Lured is the right word. Yes, absolutely. Baited. Yes, because people wouldn't come here on their own. No.
00:13:07
Speaker
The settlement of Western Canada and the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway was done to prevent American takeover of the West and to provide economic opportunities. The joke was on the government, however. Once the railway was built, the majority of the first settlers came from America.
00:13:22
Speaker
We stole them, Elise. They yeah realized they were the early ones. They realized, you know, Canada, they could see was they could see what was coming in America. So they ask let's get over the border. Yeah, let's go now while the getting's good. And they're just trying to, and they're in the American sort of, ah sort of in the American West and going, wait, Wyoming, this sucks. It's very, the and agricultural land's probably even worse there, would imagine.
00:13:48
Speaker
And it's very, very cold though. Yeah, it's pretty chilly. Can't confirm. yeah Aside from sex and whiskey-based enterprises, Frontier Canada was remarkably law-abiding. And in all other ways, the West was becoming the dominion of Sabbatarians and moral guardians.
00:14:04
Speaker
What's a Sabbatarian? Keep the Sabbath? Yeah, exactly. Oh, I'm like keeping the Sabbath. Okay, got it. Some kind of Protestant denomination. i If i yeah I saw it written in front of me, I'd understand entirely. I was thinking like sabo, like a saber. Okay, I get it.
00:14:17
Speaker
That'd be cooler. Yeah. Yeah, would. Moral prudes. Yeah. Yeah. Emphasis was on the settlement of agricultural lands. Railways obtained millions of acres of farmland, which they sold on favorable terms.
00:14:30
Speaker
Governments offered free homesteads to potential settlers. This was an attractive proposition to the Irish, Scots, and English of all professions. Thousands took up homesteads, but then retreated to the cities and towns, quote, after nature demonstrated the folly of their action.
00:14:45
Speaker
but Yeah. You cocky bastards you have some minus 40. Just when you thought it was safe to go outside. Yeah. I had a moment living in Northern Alberta where I was outside and I'm like, oh man, why would anybody live here? it's so cool.
00:15:01
Speaker
Oh, yeah. Yeah. why did air hurt My face. Let's go. away That's why people live here. Work. When this case free land. yeah Yeah, who can say no to that?
00:15:12
Speaker
Free stolen land, as it were. but Yeah, that's true. Yeah, everything's free if you steal it and give it to someone else. Yeah. Railways brought instant towns, which came up virtually overnight. Brothels were among the firsts of a settlement with railway stations and hotel bars. They came before churches and
Economic Motivations and Moral Conflicts
00:15:30
Speaker
schools and were in business long before the first trains arrived.
00:15:33
Speaker
So the notion here is railway gets built and then there's a brothel just the moment there's people there. Yeah, the moment anybody sets foot there, the first thing to come up is the brothel.
00:15:46
Speaker
Damn. Really? Yeah. So they the as soon as they're they start building the railway and there's any kind of activity around there whatsoever, there's sex workers.
00:15:59
Speaker
I mean, guess if people aren't, if it's a lot of men working on these projects, I suppose, they're not going to have kids or families necessarily with them. So they're not to have a necessarily, and you know, it's more fun than church, I suppose. and So I'll build that later. Yes.
00:16:14
Speaker
There is, i think so much of settlement and colonization is based like and the legacy that it leaves today so much of it is based around large numbers of men showing up somewhere and just humping anything that moves yes one of the reasons the brothels were allowed to exist was because people were afraid of just that men humping anything that moved and if there weren't women there they'd hump each other would they hump each other
00:16:47
Speaker
like yeah wow Well, they can't pray away the gays, so I guess we'll put this in instead. yes Yeah, there's no church yet. so how so but but yeah it's and it's like ah And here's the brothel, which is here purely because of homophobic instincts. What?
00:17:05
Speaker
That is fascinating. did not know this. mean, into the general outlines of this kind of thing, but... If only they had settler yaoi back then. It'd be a real country. So it's one of the reasons. What did you say, Dave?
00:17:17
Speaker
Oh, if only we had settler Yaoi back then, then we'd be a real country. What's that? Yaoi being a term for ah erotic man-on-man romantic fiction um in ah manga.
00:17:28
Speaker
Oh, okay. Well, that's an inspiration for a series for you that you can write. Oh, God, Yaoi? Oh, wow, that would be a rabbit hole. Ha! Based on railway workers. In more ways than one, because sometimes they're rabbits. Anyways. Oh, Dave. You know what? I think the less I know about that subject for now, the better.
00:17:44
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, agree. Unbelievably popular with women. My God. Anyways. Well, that's another that episode for you. I'd be fascinated to know more, maybe. I'd be a little worried to know more, but okay, bring it on. You'll stop associating anime with only gross dudes and start associating with gross women instead. Okay. Yay.
00:18:02
Speaker
Yay. no You know what? Fine. You're going to be gross too. From early reports of the Northwest Mounted Police, the number of brothels were one way to gauge the progress of railway construction. The Mounties were spread so thinly that they could not have possibly kept every settlement under surveillance. So they took a policy of taking action, quote, only when the activities of whores got boisterously out of hand.
00:18:30
Speaker
It is here that Gray takes note to point out that the word is pronounced whores. i that That is correct. I love the notion that the Mounties have some sort of like early 20th century tracking system, which is like the boisterous whore or o-meter. And you've got your KPIs on boisterousness and your whores. And then when it hits a certain point, it's like ding, ding, ding. Okay, ah let's go violate some human rights.
00:18:56
Speaker
yeah That sounds remarkably accurate. Is it like a metal detector you know headset and the metal detector thing with the sound, picking
Brothels as Economic and Social Hubs
00:19:04
Speaker
up the sound? The way you said that sounded like MILF detector, which makes it even funnier. Sorry, I enunciate metal detector. I'm
00:19:15
Speaker
Yes, Mounties in the forest hearing the sound of the uproar. I guess not in the forest at this stage. They'd be in the prairies. In the grass. Yeah, hiding in the long grass.
00:19:28
Speaker
It's just Nancy in Winnipeg. It's a false alarm. How could you hide the brothel? You'd be able to see it for miles. Yeah, that's true. In Saskatchewan, particularly, Jesus. It's true, the prairie but brothels, you can see it.
00:19:41
Speaker
You can see her husband running away for three days. That's right. There we go. Get off the horizon. and Yep. The West became overrun with brothels because the first tides of immigration were mostly unattached young men.
00:19:55
Speaker
The weakness of men for booze and broads has existed since the dawn of time. For these men, bars, brothels, and pool halls were social centers, and young men visited brothels with the same casualness they would a bar or a pool room.
00:20:09
Speaker
Brothels were just a fact of life. They weren't visited secretly or with any amount of guilt. Right, so instead like instead of popping down to the pub after work for a pint, you pop down to the brothel after work.
00:20:19
Speaker
Yeah. And there's an argument, again, normalization makes it more safe. Yeah. Because, you know, just based on my dim recollection of history, medieval history, the social history, its sex work was very common just among regular women. You know, you're seamstress or something, lace maker. Yeah, on the side you might do bit of sex work just to make ends meet.
00:20:38
Speaker
Yeah. And because they had brothels in the center of town, they weren't isolated on the fringes of society where they're easy prey for predators. Right. And if people are in the community, it means that harms done to them are going to be treated as harms to the community and that' policed by the community rather than if they are excluded from sort of, you know, civil society.
00:21:01
Speaker
And these women are hurt. Those hurts are then not papered over and ignored. Yeah, that's exactly right. And it's still still going on. Oh, yes. Well, the prairies anyway. But for the same length of time, this affinity has brought the guardians of public morality to outraged protest. Brothels outnumbered churches six to one. So it was a bit of an uphill battle, but we'll talk about that later. Oh my God. My hometown has something like 17 churches for like 3000 people.
00:21:29
Speaker
So that means that's going to be, you know, so like london bottles they're going to be more for like all of the new suburban development is just brothels.
00:21:43
Speaker
Hmm. And they're all in those those houses that are like three feet apart from each other. Oh, the milk carton houses. Yes. Yes. God, Edmonton's just reigned with brothels and Calgary's twice as bad. Hmm.
00:21:56
Speaker
Will they all have the same brothel color palette? Man, those developments would be way better if they were all brothels. The culture would be far more interesting. This is true. A bit unrelated to sex work is the rather amusing story of the founding of the town of North Battleford. When the builders of the Canadian Northern Railway reached Battleford, Saskatchewan, they discovered they were on the wrong side of the North Saskatchewan River.
00:22:19
Speaker
The railway was on the north while the town itself was on the south. A surveyor drove a peg into the ground and called it North Battleford.
00:22:28
Speaker
By that fall, North Battleford was a town of 500 people. In 2021, it had a population of 13,800 compared to Battleford's population of 4,400. How do you do all that planning? It's on the prairies. How many rivers? can i guess well i guess This is why everybody makes fun of Saskatchewan. Oh my
Gender Dynamics in Settlements
00:22:47
Speaker
God. You know, all the love to people in the Battlefords. North Battleford, rough town.
00:22:53
Speaker
Really? Oh yeah. Oh yeah, bud. On a road trip itinerary. Yeah. Sex work was not confined to cities. Some women worked passenger trains from Winnipeg to the Pacific coast. Some of them traveled in a circuit and others went from town to town with pool sharks.
00:23:09
Speaker
Railway news agents always knew when a new woman came to town, there would be a flood of men buying contraceptives. Many of them made more money this way than they did selling fruit in magazines. That's...
00:23:21
Speaker
That's deeply unpleasant to hear. and yeah it really is. i am. I'm laughing, but it's also like, oh, my God, this is a person. And it's. Yeah. Yeah.
00:23:31
Speaker
Yeah. Men are gross. Mm hmm. It's oh, no, it's again legal. Maybe you have more than one new person at a time. Hopefully. Yeah. Pressure off, you know.
00:23:44
Speaker
When Jen's in charge of the world, we will have a rotation of whores. Yes, exactly. So there's a fresh supply for all communities. That's right. Yeah. The term whore, I said, yeah.
00:23:54
Speaker
You know, people going to their own volition. But I don't know. In my world, nobody would... Perhaps have to do that work, but who knows? Maybe it'll always be a necessity. Yeah, it does remind me, though, that I guess Deadwood is historically accurate with a hoover in language. yeah Oh, it? Yeah. I'm like, oh, yeah, Alice Warengen.
00:24:10
Speaker
Sometimes a sex worker would like a town and decide to settle in. There's a story of one woman who bought a plot of land in Big Valley, Alberta. She put up a house and opened up Shaw. Some of the other women in town took offense and demanded their husbands run the woman out of town, but the men refused to do it.
00:24:27
Speaker
So the women took it upon themselves and torched the place. The sex worker left town after that. Oh my God, it's the Springfield Bordello. It is. There's a full sense of episode about this. He's on derriere. They did a song and dance number and everything to convert the women. But then like one person comes in with a bulldozer and it's all over.
00:24:46
Speaker
oh We put the spring in the Springfield. It's a burlesque house. There's our copyright strike. Oh yeah, watch out for that.
00:24:58
Speaker
One line should all right. Yeah. The earlier arrivals were mostly from farm families who went directly to their homesteads in Manitoba. Later arrivals were mainly single men or husbands who left their wives and families at home so they could get established out west.
00:25:14
Speaker
The building boom failed to keep pace with the need for homes. Jobs were plentiful, but places to live were not. That's familiar. I'm going say, oh, geez. Wow, we sure learned a lot from back then. Yeah.
00:25:25
Speaker
More things change, things do the same, right? Cities could barely keep pace with the population growth. Between 1900 and 1911, the populations of Edmonton and Calgary exploded to nearly 10 times their size.
00:25:38
Speaker
There were a couple of financial panics during that time that certainly didn't do any favors for the attempt to keep pace with the demand for public services like schools, sidewalks, water mains, sewers, and hospitals. Oh, God, that must have been chaos ten times.
00:25:52
Speaker
Now, granted, when your population starts at 10,000 goes to 100,000, it's not quite the same as a million going to 100, 10 million, but still. Yeah, still, that's a lot to keep and to keep pace with.
00:26:05
Speaker
Yes. The men doing the building were basically all young, strong men, says Gray. Here, in short, was a male population in the prime of life, glowing with the virility of youth and in the superb physical condition, which a steady diet of hard work produced.
00:26:21
Speaker
So these men were sexy, is what this author is saying. Yes,
Policing Complexities and Hypocrisy
00:26:25
Speaker
that's exactly what it say. It's really important understand how hot the settlers were. They're young, they're hot. Oh, no wonder they needed to have all these brothels to stop them from just, like, falling into one another's arms.
00:26:37
Speaker
I guess so. I'm like, someone's got a crush. i was Yeah. But there was a problem, and that problem was women. Specifically, there weren't that many women at this time, and it was mostly men coming out west. The single men, with their virility and all that, were looking for female companionship.
00:26:56
Speaker
Mm-hmm. these studs are horny. Just cannot keep it together. focus. Married men. They're distracting each other with their virility and all.
00:27:06
Speaker
Yeah, they're glowing. Glistening in the sun. Yep. Married men, quote, reverted to type. I'm not entirely sure what gray means by reverted to type, though I suppose it's something along the lines of reverting to what single men were like. Yeah.
00:27:22
Speaker
And we're looking for the same thing. More than a few married men found themselves married again. Oh. Imagine writing home to your wife to tell her that your new wife has moved in. I don't think you'd tell her. one of those people keep secrets. You have a wife in one place...
00:27:38
Speaker
You railroad wife when you got your other wife. Then you just delay moving your family in and then the sitcom, ah you know, comes out of that. which oh I feel awkward already. Didn't end horribly for anyone. i think that situation is so surprisingly common.
00:27:53
Speaker
Oh, dead circle. The secret family? Yeah. The Northwest Mounded Police had a policy of live and let live when it came to sex workers. There was a nearly universal acceptance that sex work had to be tolerated because it couldn't be eradicated. That's interesting at the time as well. that Yeah. it's more We associate that that with more of a modern attitude, like we were saying, sort of the decriminalization yeah style attitude. The cops were progressive without realizing they were being progressive.
00:28:21
Speaker
They were also probably John's. mean, there was um jury or shortly after Louis Riel and the the Red River Rebellion. Yeah, there was um an outbreak of an STI in one location and the cops carried it to a reserve. Oh, Jesus. It infected most of the population there.
00:28:44
Speaker
Yeah, that's another unpleasant yeah pleasant side of history. that's Yeah, that's pretty bad. A long history of getting fucked over by cops. Mm hmm. That's the sort of other side of this as well. It's just the health implications. like I mean, you're saying contraceptives would go sales would spike. You're thinking that that's probably condoms, right? Like the old fashioned.
00:29:05
Speaker
So hopefully they're doing something to mitigate. But you you have to think if you have that many brothels. Yeah. Lots of STIs going around. And especially back of that day, like syphilis, like everything. Yeah. Limited recourse to treatment probably as well. Anyway, it sounds. a Yeah. Yeah.
00:29:21
Speaker
We say history is gross. Yes, it is. Mm-hmm. When the police took action against sex workers, it was usually for a more important reason than they were simply sex workers. Reasons like hampering the construction of the railway.
00:29:33
Speaker
Alcohol and sex workers around the work gangs became threats to projects. To remove the threat, police raided brothels and charged women with being inmates of houses of ill fame, fined them, and ordered them to move on.
00:29:46
Speaker
When the pressure of the moral crusaders became too much to ignore, the police gave in and staged token raids. The workers treated the fines like licensing and willingly pleaded guilty. That's basically what it is. You you pay it. to I mean, if they're actually leaving town, that's one thing, but they're still making money off it. They tolerate it until. It sets up basically a taxation system. It's actually it almost becomes a sort of strange form of regulating it.
00:30:09
Speaker
Yeah. But if the police became serious about driving sex workers out of business, the women would plead guilty, forcing the police to convict them in court. Everyone knew where the brothels were, but it was a lot harder to obtain evidence that would stand up in court.
00:30:24
Speaker
yeah Stand up. Get it. and know ah but um Driving women out of town was not a long term solution. They just set up outside the city limits anyway. So the police tried to live with it.
00:30:35
Speaker
Right. Like I say, they're they're visiting them, too. So they're not. And again that's kind of the hypocrisy of the system as well. It's, you know, they're not facing up to the reality of, look, this is just what is happening. Yeah. You know. Well, and it's this weirdness of having this social system that's been built up over a very long period of time with these moral codes that are incompatible with what's clearly the intrinsic way the society is set up in the first place, because I mean, from what it looks like is if you have shortage in the ability to exchange, sex work will show up because the women need to get by.
00:31:16
Speaker
they need you know food, shelter, housing, et cetera. They need the things they need money, basically, because money is required. And there's a shortage of women and there's a surplus of men demanding sex. So that's just inevitably going to happen.
00:31:30
Speaker
Like this, this is your capitalism. This is what you wanted, right? And it's yeah extracting too. It's extractive. So you, rather than say, oh well, why don't we build towns and send whole families out there? It is okay. All these single young men who may be more prone to, like you say, i have all their virility, this is all planned, right? too So we have a situation where they're actively encouraging them to visit sex workers and punishing the sex workers for what basically they're just filling a demand right yeah and that's how patriarchy regulates yep it is and it's just yeah i mean the very hypocrisy of the victorian system too where it is in fact like oh no it's it's a fact of life but they are in sort of deep denial about that that's interesting how that plays out in the yeah canadian prairies too Yeah. None of the bigger settlements showed any particular interest in suppressing sex work, and the attention of civic leaders were often on other things.
00:32:25
Speaker
A jail was a frill few towns thought they could afford, meaning even if sex workers were arrested, there was simply nowhere to put them. Cities needed to grow and develop before a dedicated jail for women could be built.
00:32:38
Speaker
Well, I mean, at least a jail is low on their list of priorities. jail for women. mean, I'm glad it's low on their list of priorities. Yeah. That's good. don't need to jail these women. Like, come on. In the town of Medicine Hat, women were simply sent home. And if there was a charge, the chief of police would send word when she was to appear in court.
00:32:57
Speaker
This was a summon system before the summon system was actually invented. It's wild how these kinds of things come about. The existence of sex work was a challenge to the dominant Anglo-Saxon Protestant churches. They railed against the laxity of police. When the police cracked down and confined sex workers to segregated areas, the moral reformers became angrier. It wasn't entirely clear what they wanted. Did they want the police to run the women out of town or just keep them to their own little area?
00:33:24
Speaker
Generally, they did want the women run out of town, but that really didn't help. Right. for the the reasons we stated, it's it's a contradiction where this is basically an essential service at this point.
00:33:34
Speaker
Yeah. Given the way these towns and settlements are structured. so they are between a rock and a hard place. This is something we see again and again with how a lot of our economic and social systems are set up where it's honestly, it's almost like ah something like people being unhoused where, well, you have engineered poverty, but now you want all the impoverished people to somehow and just not be here.
00:34:03
Speaker
Well, you engineered this. But no, what we need to do is ah push them out, hide them, social murder, and try to exclude them from like you know basic operation of of ah civil society and all that kind of thing.
00:34:17
Speaker
But it's this... Again, for someone to be rich, someone else has to be poor. And this then applies sort of in the same way to sex work and how the very nature of how they set up these communities not only invites, but kind of requires the existence of sex work. Mm hmm.
00:34:34
Speaker
But ah the sex workers, of course, need to be morally crusaded against because sex work is immoral. And we just need to magically have all of these basic things that happen every single time you say yeah you do this just not happen by yelling at people enough. And it just simply doesn't work.
00:34:51
Speaker
Yeah. And how can you say, oh, these young men are so young and virile and they just do what's in men's nature and then punish women for providing a service to that so so-called nature, right? Like it's blaming the victims a lot of the way. They're providing a service. Why? What do you, you know what I mean? Well, it it's that's the it's a way to blame women for your own. Well, you know, yeah.
00:35:13
Speaker
Well, I just like them. Capitalism blames the poor. Patriarchy plays out but out blames the women when neither have actually done anything wrong here. No, that's right. There's no moral failing on their part.
00:35:25
Speaker
No. the interest from the clergy was intermittent though combating the evils of alcohol took priority sex work was the lesser of two evils catholics took a bit more tolerant view of booze and sex work the anglicans were somewhere in between with time alcohol became the bigger problem of the two more families were affected by alcohol than sex workers I buy that. yep That makes sense. Yep.
00:35:48
Speaker
It is fascinating how people throughout history were trashed like all the time. Yeah. They're on something. They're on laudanum or they're on they're just drunk, you know? Anyway, it's very interesting.
00:36:01
Speaker
So yeah, you can I can imagine the chaos too. These little villages, these settlements. Yeah. Usually alcohol was served at brothels. It was the primary source of the revenue. So drunk, rowdy clients were terrible for business. They bought less alcohol and required too much care when they eventually got sick and passed out.
00:36:18
Speaker
The drunks were loud and it attracted the attention of the neighbors, which could result in a visit from the police and financial losses. A primary reason for the women not to let the men drink too much was violence. One madam was murdered by a drunk man in Edmonton.
00:36:32
Speaker
This quote comes from the paper, The Other Little House, The Brothel as a Colonial Institution by L.K. Bertram. If they are drunk, we fear them. We never get over this fear.
Historical Regulation and Social Implications
00:36:42
Speaker
Oh, yeah. That's another aspect, too, is the very dangerous nature of the work. Yeah, absolutely. And they're drunk. We fear them. We never get over this fear. That is that is a chilling quote.
00:36:54
Speaker
Yeah, it is. Winnipeg was the jumping off point for the scattered settlements of the West and it set the fashion for Western cities. Pious settlers, typically Anglo-Saxon Protestants, from Ontario started coming after the construction of the Winnipeg-De Pembina railway line in 1878.
00:37:10
Speaker
The Winnipeg pattern of city planning was a railway station first, then around it were hotels and bars and stores providing plenty of employment for any who decided to stay in Winnipeg. Then beyond that were warehouses and retail stores, then houses. Regina, Saskatoon, and Calgary all had similar layouts.
00:37:27
Speaker
And it's flat, so it's a very grid-like pattern. Yeah. And if you look at Calgary now, I don't have a lot of experience with Calgary, short of driving around it. But you see all of these, like just acres upon acres of houses that are around the highway. And you can see like over ridges and things. It's just all houses. Which we've established are all brothels.
00:37:53
Speaker
Yes. That's right. Milk carton brothels. For every church you see, there's what, seven brothels? Yeah. Remember that? Six of them. Going through Alberta. Yeah. I don't know if these numbers are still accurate, but who knows? Yeah, they are a little dated. oh just 150 years old.
00:38:08
Speaker
Aside from religious leaders, the citizens of Winnipeg didn't seem too bothered by sex work. They were more concerned, judging by the letters to the editor around that time, about home rule in Ireland. I'm not sure which side they were on, but they certainly cared.
00:38:21
Speaker
Worried about it either way. Yep. If they're Protestants, they've been worried about... Independence. Yeah. I can't even comment because I really have no idea no idea what I'm talking about when it comes to the troubles.
00:38:32
Speaker
Winnipeg had more than 200 women employed in 48 brothels on McFarlane and Annabella streets. Two streets. Yep. That is that is a significant number. The Reverend Dr. J.B. Silcox insisted that all that was needed was for the police to drive the sex workers out and keep them out.
00:38:49
Speaker
Sounds like a pretty simple plan. Funny the police never thought of that. Yeah. yeah Yeah, all problems can simply be solved with, ah you know, just by trying really hard because nobody had done that before in human history.
00:39:01
Speaker
Yeah, that's right. And just tell people to go away and there'll be somebody else's problem and they just vanish like we do with homeless encampments now. Oh, well, just just ah get them out of here. Where should they go?
00:39:13
Speaker
um yeah but we got to trash all their stuff. That'll help. Yeah, exactly. Just yeah throw the ah throw away all their worldly possessions. That'll help them get on their feet again a little has changed in some respect. Probably because the women would just set up shop outside the town where they would no longer be under the jurisdiction of city police. Right. So, yeah, you can push them out of the city and keep them out, but they're still there. But in a way, it's kind of like problem solved. You know, sweep it under the rug. It's on the outskirts of town.
00:39:39
Speaker
becomes more dangerous again for the women. Yeah. But they don't care about that. Yeah, because if they're outside of town, they're then further from any kind of necessary services. Yeah, that's right. The dominant segment of Winnipeg's business community was real estate. Occasional confrontations between real estate promoters and brothel operators caused some of the moral eruptions.
00:39:59
Speaker
Frederick Duvall, an American-born Presbyterian pastor and, quote, pint-sized zealot, arrived in 1888 and served Winnipeg for nearly 20 years. That guy sounds great. He does. Yeah, just fun at parties. A pint-sized zealot. Yes. Little Napoleon over here.
00:40:16
Speaker
In the fall of 1903, Duval and his associates turned their attention from booze to brothels. When sermons failed to accomplish anything, he had all the men of the congregations of the largest churches stay to discuss the social evil that was sex work.
00:40:30
Speaker
It was said in New York City of sex work that segregation does not segregate and regulation does not regulate. Segregated cities there became nests of crime. Well, yeah, when you push everybody on the outskirts beyond regulation. oh there's crime. Yeah. Wow, I'm shocked. 700 people stayed for the meeting at the Central Congressional Church and voted overwhelmingly to close the Thomas Street brothels.
00:40:54
Speaker
Businessman E.D. Martin said the brothels were a threat to children because schools were going up in the site of the Thomas Street houses. I don't know. Won't somebody please think of the children. That's right.
00:41:05
Speaker
That's yeah exactly. That's right. Yeah. That's always the excuse. yeah They, you know, it's interesting. They could follow the Dutch model. Say you've ever been to like the red light district or in other European cities, perhaps other places where, again, they're more incorporated into the, into the general neighborhood. You have sort of parts of the city neighborhoods that are maybe where that kind of work is concentrated, but it's still incorporated into the community again. Like it's, Yeah.
00:41:28
Speaker
You'd think it'd be better for business as well all around, but that's why you have to force people to commute to work in the city downtown, right? Support the businesses. That's true. That sex work instead. Oh my God. Draw people in with fun stuff instead of boring move to work from home on the collapse of offices has probably done an incredible number on the brothel industry.
00:41:49
Speaker
That's right. Are there still brothels? Sure has. Yes. Okay. yeah uncommonly, they're not sort of a part of the social fabric of every community now. I mean, when we talk about sex work, we're mostly talking about OnlyFans and things like that nowadays outside of the pornography industry, which OnlyFans is sort of a part of. But I mean, um you know, the sex work classic is certainly still alive and well.
Brothel Raids and Community Reactions
00:42:13
Speaker
It's just not what it used to be.
00:42:16
Speaker
No. The next night, the clergy rented the Winnipeg Theater for three hours of denunciations to a packed house of 1,500. Two days later, the clergy went to the place to do. Yeah, nothing else is going on. i mean but brothel instead Imagine being such a good speaker. in brothel You're more interesting than the brothel. Yeah. I guess. How many of the people that how many people were just hate listening?
00:42:39
Speaker
Yeah. What else are you into? You got it? Yeah, it's going on. You know, you can't you can't watch on YouTube later. you know i was about to say these were the podcasts of the day, which people can consume instead of watching pornography.
00:42:52
Speaker
That's right. That's our goal. It's more interesting than pornography. Yeah. You should be listening to us instead of watching porn. Yeah, exactly. and if you're listening to this, hopefully you're not watching part at the same time. i If you're watching port at the same time, you do, you know what?
00:43:07
Speaker
Shine on you. They're going to do them. Shine on you crazy diamond. We're here for you. i guess I consider it a challenging wank at best.
00:43:17
Speaker
well
00:43:20
Speaker
I would think, well, you know what? This is a separate episode. Complete the wonder camera challenge. don't want to think what people are doing as they listen to this episode. Hopefully you're doing the dishes or walking your dog. You know what? Driving to work. That's your problem.
00:43:37
Speaker
Whatever you're doing right now is your problem. Do not to attempt the Wonder Camera a Challenge while driving. Okay. Yes, please don't. know Two days later, the clergy went to the police commission and demanded action against the brothels. This uproar exploded during the 1903 civic election campaign. The incumbent mayor was driven to retire from the race, leading Duvall candidate Thomas Sharp elected almost by default.
00:44:03
Speaker
Oh, boy. Was it like, oh, this guy's going to close them, this guy's not, so they voted to look for the guy who's going to close them? Yeah, was... this guy's status quo and this guy's on a crusade. Right. Yeah. The sex work issue was important to the clergy, but it wasn't as important to other candidates who were worried about bigger things, like a better water supply, more bridges, and public versus private ownership of electricity. Oh, boy. The voter turnout was one of the poorest in many years, making Sharpe's win an easy one, with only voters sympathetic to his message going to the polls.
00:44:32
Speaker
ah So there was just no opposition. And they're like, yeah, but the water supply. and Yeah. Duval succeeded in putting most of the civic administration on record as favoring the shutdown of Thomas Street. The matter got quick attention from the new police commission, but Chief John McRae regarded the Duvalites as meddling busybodies who would give his morality squad an an impossible task.
00:44:55
Speaker
He's right. Yeah. In this case, I agree with the police officer. Yeah. You know, broken clocks. yeah keeping minor crime under control occupied most of the police's time the task was continually complicated by a steady flow of crooks and sex workers coming up from the u.s chief mccray added to the force his finances permitted americans i love the idea that there's just this endless flood of crooks and s sex workers flooding north of the border I just picture them crossing the parallel, Fortnite parallel, like, woohoo!
00:45:31
Speaker
Guns blazing. You've got a sleazy mask that's all playing as some guy has a fan of masks. Yeah, and the crooks all have masks and they're carrying a bag with a dollar sign on it.
00:45:42
Speaker
Yeah. Exactly. Yeah, you're classic criminal types crossing the border. Yep. Yep. Chief McRae added to the force as finances permitted, but he was continually losing ground with Winnipeg's growth. His job was difficult enough without having the Thomas Street women all over the place where they couldn't be kept under the watchful eye of the police. McRae was fresh out of sympathy with the Duval campaign.
00:46:04
Speaker
But hey, maybe that's smarter. are You set up. Well, no, that's actually less safe for women. You set up, you know, your own private business, but how are you going to rent a place? You can't. Yeah, never mind. That's a bad idea on my part.
00:46:16
Speaker
You kind of need a brothel to be safe in this era, I would think. yeah I mean, in any era, genuinely. Yeah. Because workplace rather than, it's a workplace and there's, you know, other people around in case things get dangerous. And by things, I mean men.
00:46:31
Speaker
yeah Yes. yeah On January 7th, 1904, the new police commission gave McRae his orders. Raid the Thomas Street brothels and drive the women out of business. It didn't help for McRae to explain to the police commission that this would just spread the women out across the city. So in order to prevent leaks, he told no one about the raid.
00:46:50
Speaker
When the night shift arrived the following Saturday, he gathered the force together to issue his instructions. They would go at once to the Thomas Street brothels, arrest all of the keepers and their employees, and transport them to the police stations.
00:47:02
Speaker
The raid went off without a hitch, though there was a great deal of confusion and protests from the customers. Hey, my dick is in there. Individual houses had been raided before for unseemly conduct or on suspicion of harboring fugitives. But a raid on the entire street, quote, violated everybody's sense of fitness of things, including, if truth were known, that of most of the raiding policemen.
00:47:26
Speaker
That is so interesting. That seems so like modern. You know what i mean? Like how they are outraged that this brothel was raided. Yeah, that's actually interesting. Like, well, i don't know it's modern and it's not because again, when it's a part of the community, they see it's the natural order of things. And we know for a fact that if this gets blown up, it's going to become scattered and messier and worse. Yeah.
00:47:54
Speaker
Rather than things actually seem to work in an orderly fashion when you have a red light district. Yeah. So they had a more sensible attitude towards it than we do now.
00:48:05
Speaker
i mean, it depends where you are again, if you're in the Netherlands or if you're in maybe, yeah i built maybe Thailand, other places like this, where it's more accepted and is more part of the community.
Cyclical Nature of Enforcement
00:48:13
Speaker
well and for most of the world, we've gone backwards on this. Yeah. Hmm.
00:48:17
Speaker
The only problem with the raid was transportation in that there wasn't enough of it. While the police waited for more wagons to show up, they identified the brothel keepers and their employees. The names of the customers they were with were taken down and the men were ordered on their way.
00:48:32
Speaker
It was a nice night though, so the men stuck around for more excitement. Just chilling out, watching like watching the raid. hey how a Yeah. in there Yeah.
00:48:42
Speaker
As the police brought their prisoners out, crowds jeered loudly and followed the parade of sex workers to the police station. The Manitoba Free Press reported that men stood 10 deep in front of the station and hooted at the police as they arrived.
00:48:56
Speaker
So they're they're arresting the women, and letting the men go. Right. It's kind of incredible that this is basically competing angry mobs between men and their wives. Yeah, yeah, it is isn't it? That's right. I'm on the women's side, whoever they are, you know.
00:49:12
Speaker
This is absolutely backwards. and Oh, this is moral sin. and more Well, I guess not in their not in their patriarchal view, of course, but it is interesting that the men who are going to these places of their own volition, i let yeah, let them go, but the women, I know.
00:49:27
Speaker
Yeah, well, that's exactly it. It's always punished the women, never the men, because it's about enforcing a social order. Right. Yeah. The Manitoba Free Press also reported that 12 madams were arrested, along with 72 inmates and four male porters.
00:49:43
Speaker
Chief McRae ordered a guard posted on Thomas Street to stop people from looting the vacant houses. The keepers were all fined $40 while the employees were fined $20 each. Then they were all warned that segregated sex work was over in the city and they must either leave town, reform, or face stiff penalties if ever they showed up in court again.
00:50:01
Speaker
The women paid little attention to the warnings. They paid their fines, got rid of their houses and moved to new locations in the city. Yeah. Well, what else is it supposed to do Yeah. It's interesting how, again, the brothel is a revenue generator for the city because, again, they're paying fines, but also, oh, we get to just steal all their stuff. Yeah. Like it is interesting when you look at the history of things, how much it is about taking people's things.
00:50:25
Speaker
Oh, yeah. Of course, again, you know, it's about property and, you know, it's interesting how would that plays into it yet once more. It's opportunity just to take their, you know, their housing, their buildings, their possessions, in addition to the fines. It's a revenue generator that way, too. Yeah.
00:50:41
Speaker
So again, further exploitation, perhaps. Having achieved victory, the clergy dropped the subject of sex work, though they would occasionally return to the topic of fallen women at other times. The Reverend Charles, the Reverend Charles.
00:50:54
Speaker
Yes. The Reverend Charles W. Gordon had a series of lectures developing the idea that women were to blame for sex work and the men who patronized them were moral lepers that should be named and shamed, but mostly they focused on the evils of alcohol.
00:51:09
Speaker
So, yeah, it's all it's always the women's fault. Yeah. Oh, it's just men. It's just men's nature. Yeah. That is also part of it, too. Yeah. Boys will be boys. And again, patriarchy can't function if the men are punished for behavior in a way that women are not or in equal measure.
00:51:28
Speaker
Yeah. it's ah It's no longer patriarchy in the entire social system they're trying to enforce, which is based upon exploitation of women in specific ways, ah whether it was in the home or in the brothel or wherever, cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
00:51:42
Speaker
Yeah, that's right. Yeah. After scattering the women of Thomas Street, the police would get no more cooperation from the women. Previously, the police would charge would stage their periodic raids. The madams would plead guilty. The fines would be paid and every everyone would move on. But these days were over now and the police are going to need to prove their charges.
00:52:00
Speaker
Every single one of them. OK, yeah. So they're not going to do them any favors. I love malicious compliance with getting arrested. Yeah, smart. It was not enough for the police to prove some houses had unusual numbers of people coming and going at all hours. As long as the occupants behaved, the keepers couldn't be convicted of running disorderly houses. To get a conviction, the police needed the testimony of someone who was there and paid for services.
00:52:27
Speaker
Chief McCray was prepared to have the morality squad watch the house from outside, but he wasn't about to have his men go inside and become accessories to the commission of an offense. But if the police refused to fabricate evidence, how could the law be enforced?
00:52:41
Speaker
Stool pigeons. Men would visit... ah Such a waste of time. Like therere isn't there isn't aren't there like isn't there a lot violence in this era as well? Like aren't people being. No, no, it's settler. era It's settler era Winnipeg. It was fine.
00:52:59
Speaker
Like, yeah, i't think there's a lot of violence happening that could be focusing on instead of like this. Men would visit a sex worker and pay her with marked money. Then he'd testify against her in court.
00:53:09
Speaker
That's actually very exploitative too. That's pretty gross again. I was about to say. gets worse. In July 1905, the city had a request from the police commission to put up a $250 secret service fund that Chief McRae could use to buy testimony.
00:53:26
Speaker
There was no on there again, playing the system. How convenient paying these undercover officers to have sex with women testify against them. Oh, they're just normal men. Oh, great. Yeah. I mean, this is bad. Yeah, it is.
00:53:42
Speaker
There was no way that city patrolmen could cope with sex workers being on the streets. The policemen, mostly due to their height, but also their goofy London Bobby style hats, could be spotted a mile away.
00:53:53
Speaker
Oh, man. It's like, you know, that the red coat approach to battle. is Yeah. Yeah. Right out in the open. No, you know, everyone knows where you are. I mean, i guess it's fair of them. You know where the cop is. They're not being sneaky and underhanded. Yeah. It doesn't make their job any easier, I suppose.
00:54:08
Speaker
Duval stated that what Winnipeg needed was more zealous law enforcement by city police. The city council agreed and upped the secret service fund from $250 to And for the next three years.
00:54:23
Speaker
So the cops have always been yeah massively overfunded. Crack down, crack down. And for the next three years, minus a few casual references, the controversy faded from view. It faded from view, but it wasn't gone.
00:54:36
Speaker
I was about to say. In 1907, the police managed to convict the keepers of 71 brothels and 101 sex workers. Next year, those figures doubled. In 1908, Magistrate T. Main-Daily kept track of the number of young girls coming before him on morals charges. When the number hit 16, he decided enough was enough.
00:54:56
Speaker
Daly was known as the terror of the underworld for his harsh sentences for criminals. But when it came to sex work, Daly was tolerant and understanding. He wrote a letter to the police commission, and the idea of it was that since 1904, we're at April 1909 here, things had gone from bad to worse.
Saskatoon's Unique Role in Sex Work
00:55:14
Speaker
He produced a list of over 400 sex workers from over the five year period since the raid and removal of the houses on Thomas Street. In the end, he moved for the repeal of the 1904 resolution and, quote, all matters relating to houses of ill fame and immoral women be left to the chief of police. He to act in accordance with his discretion and best judgment.
00:55:36
Speaker
Stop clogging up my court with this bullshit. yeah Yeah. Yeah, exactly. The motion was unanimously accepted by the commission. McCray established a red light district under his control.
00:55:46
Speaker
The houses had to be concentrated in one area. He had a meeting with one of the leading madams of the day and had her spread the news. They undoubtedly discussed locations, but whatever was said, it was settled on an isolated area in Port Douglas along the Red River. So the sex workers were back to having a segregated area for their work rather than just being scattered all over the streets of Winnipeg.
00:56:07
Speaker
This kept them out of the more polite neighborhoods and had them concentrated in a smaller area of the city where police could keep their watchful eye on them. Seems reasonable. And probably skim a ton of the money.
00:56:19
Speaker
Oh, probably. Well, that's right. Yeah. But no, that seems like a reasonable solution, you know? Yeah. As as everybody's safe. and And they are doing it in cooperation with the sex workers, it sounds like, as well. Or at least the medams. Yeah.
00:56:31
Speaker
Mm-hmm. Saskatoon was founded by Sabbatarian prohibitionist Zealot and still became a haven for sex workers. Mm-hmm. God bless. The appearance of new sex workers in Regina was explained by saying they were recent arrivals from Saskatoon.
00:56:45
Speaker
When Edmonton would crack down on sex work, the women went to Saskatoon. Winnipeg workers who needed a change of scenery were shipped off to Saskatoon. Basically, Saskatoon is a lovely little city for some sex.
00:56:58
Speaker
Right. Yeah. damn you know and it's nicely connected uh there's going to be railways between all of them and so yeah edmonton to saskatoon to winnipeg and saskatoon down to regina perfect you know we had a whole system we had sex work we had trains that were regularly used to be a real country it's true actually in this case we were like europe you know look what they took from us we were cool Oh, don't get me started on the Kootenays. It was like steampunk future in the past.
00:57:29
Speaker
It was all steamships and railways. Not anymore. Yeah. We had really cool thing going. I think steampunk future in the past was just called the age of steam. Oh, yeah.
00:57:39
Speaker
Maybe. my way sounds cooler. Yes. Steampunk future in the past. It was real, man. But based on its origins, no Western city should have been a match for Saskatoon's high-toned morality. It doesn't help, though, that the moral reformers that sought to found a city were completely inept.
00:57:59
Speaker
This was the temperance... I love it. It's going be an interesting clash of cultures. Yeah. Ineptitude versus not. I'm sorry, Tracy, continue. yeah That's fine. Keep going. It's never going to start. Sorry. This was the Temperance Colonization Society, the TCS, and their settlement was almost an instant disaster. The the Temperance Colonization Society?
00:58:21
Speaker
Absolutely. Oh, my God. That's one of the most vile things I've ever heard. Yeah, it sounds bad. This is fun. Society, okay. Everything else. Yeah.
00:58:31
Speaker
The TCS started as a for-profit idea by J.A. Livingston, a livingstone at tycoon from Toronto. He discovered the federal government was selling off homestead land in the West to settlement companies for a dollar an acre back in 1881.
00:58:44
Speaker
He told this to his fellow tycoon and prohibitionist, J.N. Lake. They formed a company together and purchased 100,000 acres with plans to obtain 2 million acres in total, which they would then then sell to prospective settlers.
00:58:58
Speaker
While making arrangements and forming the TCS, they started selling shares in the company and the land. They wanted to take advantage of Ontario's great prohibitionist zeal. Their plan was to obtain a large enough tract of land for settlers to, quote, live free forever from the threat of distilled damnation.
00:59:15
Speaker
So it's basically a temperance cult. Yes. I love it. They're buying a bunch of land. Yeah. yeah We are going to build a utopian society with no whores. No alcohol, which also, i guess, would mean. Implies. Yeah, implies. Yeah.
00:59:32
Speaker
Understanding that the alcohol was the greater social scourge at the time. yeah An actual one. But yeah, look, I still think alcohol is a scourge society. Yes, but I'm not. This sounds like a nightmare to me.
00:59:45
Speaker
yeah I still would not want to join a temperance cult. Each settler had to sign a pledge never to permit alcohol to be brought onto or consumed on his land. So Livingston and Lake had their company and now they're 2 million acres, covering roughly 55 square miles.
01:00:00
Speaker
Certain they could insulate themselves from liquor traffic. But there was a problem, only a small one. The teensy, tiniest of problems. They knew nothing of the prairies.
01:00:12
Speaker
Oh, sorry. I missed that. You jumped on the button, Jen. i know. They knew nothing of the prairies, the land, the climate, transportation, or agriculture. Amazing. They had no idea what they were doing. Yes. Might be a little bit of a problem.
01:00:29
Speaker
And they seem to have not read the fine print of their agreement with the Dominion of Canada. Not allowed. The government certainly set aside the two million acres, but they also decreed that the society could only take the odd-numbered sections and not all of them.
01:00:44
Speaker
The prairie was being surveyed into a grid system of sections of one square mile. There were 36 sections in each township, all numbered 1 to 36. Yeah. And in each township, sections 11 and 29 were designated for schools, while sections 8 and 26 were dedicated to the Hudson's Bay Company reserves.
01:01:02
Speaker
So they're planning community, it's not just, you know, clusters of land. Yes. All connected. The Dominion of Canada retained ownership of even-numbered sections, so the map became a giant checkerboard, with society sections being dry, as in no alcohol permitted, and the Dominion sections being wet.
01:01:22
Speaker
This destroyed the basic idea of the settlement. Oh, that's so funny. That's a logistical nightmare to try to like, what do you, what do you literally like have borders? Yeah. Checks like you plan the utopian society and the government owns half of it.
01:01:37
Speaker
Well, good. There's no way that is not going to devolve into a sex cult, despite the temperance aspect. Absolutely. Because that's what happens to all cults. Except for, it occurred to me, Heaven's Gate. Oh. That the opposite.
01:01:53
Speaker
it was a no-sex cult. But all the rest of them, yeah. Still, Livingston and Lake managed to sell off 3,000 tracts of land to Ontario buyers. However, only a handful of buyers planned on actually going west. They were mostly land speculators looking to sell at a profit.
01:02:09
Speaker
Right. Undeterred, the directors headed by Lake headed out to their land in 1883, armed only with a map of the general area, which happened to be dead in the middle of nowhere.
01:02:21
Speaker
yep It only took three weeks for them to get to the site, stopping for a full day of rest on Sundays, of course. Then, satisfied with the land, they returned home to prepare for the settlers departing the following year in 1884. The next year, however, instead of a house-building boom, there was just a smattering of shacks and surveyor's pegs in the town site. Lumber was floated down the South Saskatchewan River and arrived so waterlogged that it was unusable.
01:02:45
Speaker
When the settlers arrived, they arrived to a massive prairie fire. I don't know, modernist church. That'll happen. ah That's incredible.
01:02:55
Speaker
So all in all meant for settlement. I don't know. i don't think I don't think so. So all in all, not an auspicious start to the city. That all burned down. I mean, all the stakes burned down.
01:03:06
Speaker
Yeah. In 1884, the promoters managed to get less than a dozen families onto their land. Wherever they stopped, they were met with questions. Why buy land from the Temperance Society when it was available for free as homesteads from the government?
01:03:20
Speaker
And why were they 150 miles, 240 kilometers, from the railway when there was land available close to the Canadian Pacific Railway? All good questions. What are we doing here? Yeah.
01:03:32
Speaker
yeah In 1886, settlement was so slow that the Dominion cancelled the deal with barely 100 settlers in the society block. It took 15 years for Saskatoon to become more than just a handful of shacks. But once the railway boom started at the turn of the century, the area exploded into life. A church site that was bought for $500 in 1904 sold in yeah damn A downtown corner bought for $450 1904, sold That is
01:04:10
Speaker
i think that's nineteen seventy one dollars okay i see but still that's but yeah yeah damn by nineteen fourteen there was a hundred and fifty real estate agents in a town of ten thousand people and the temperance enclave worse than rats I'll apologies to any real estate fans who are listening. Like and subscribe. Apologize to any rats. That's right. Like and subscribe. Take the rats.
01:04:38
Speaker
Just because we're all Burton doesn't mean we won't take the rats. And the temperance enclave? It was gone without a trace. There was no evidence that it had ever existed. By 1909, there was so much drinking and sex work that it drew the wrath of the clergy. Woo! Well, what do they expect at this point? Like, yeah you know? Look, we tried it God's way and it didn't work.
01:05:01
Speaker
Sex work in Saskatoon was unique. In one place, brothel patrons were offered three choices of race by color. There was a white brothel, a black brothel, and a Japanese brothel. They're so progressive. Yeah.
01:05:14
Speaker
The first brothel area was close to the main construction area in the southwest corner of what became Riversdale, where the city dump was located and might still be in the nineteen seventy s With the construction of bridges and the railway, the brothels had their own boom. But once the construction was over, so was the brothel boom.
01:05:32
Speaker
Oh, no. The best illustration of Saskatoon's general attitude towards sex was the Babe Belanger case, heard by the Superior Court in 1910. Babe ran afoul of the Mounties and was run out of town the previous fall. She went to Regina, but found the climate to be unhealthy.
01:05:50
Speaker
So she settled in a little place called Broderick, about 30 miles, 50 kilometers south of Saskatoon. To be fair, if you've been to Regina, I agree with her. Yes. Every time I go there, it's just a dust bowl.
01:06:03
Speaker
It's just the worst features of every prairie city, which tend to be unlovely to begin with, with none of the charms of the more charming prairie cities. So, like, imagine Edmonton without the charm. That is grim.
01:06:16
Speaker
And Edmonton is not that charming. Yeah, I didn't want to say, but yeah. i've I've spent many, many, many years in Edmonton. You know, I love that city, but charm isn't necessarily a strong point.
01:06:30
Speaker
Yes. Babe wanted to return to Saskatoon, but she was worried the Mounties would pick her up for an outstanding sentence and force her to serve time. So she wrote the Mountie in Saskatoon with a proposition.
01:06:41
Speaker
She told him that she would like to come back and run a small business with only one girl so she could run a quiet place. If the Mountie gave his word that she could run without trouble, she would make it worth it for him to do the tune of $100 couple months.
01:06:55
Speaker
Instead of replying, the Mountie took the letter to his superior, who signed a warrant for Babe's arrest on the charger novel yeah on the charge of bribing a police officer, which was a penitentiary offense.
01:07:06
Speaker
Ugh, lame. Take your bribe like a man. The case became a minor cause celebre. When it came before a judge and jury in January 1910, the letter was produced and read. Babe explained it away as being just a joke she played on the Mountie.
01:07:21
Speaker
The jury chose to believe her story and she was acquitted. ah job new it Speaking of charm, she clearly had some. The judge lost his mind. Really?
01:07:32
Speaker
but Sending a sex worker to jail was clearly not the way the men of Saskatoon thought Babe should be treated. You know? One of the critical problems for Saskatoon sex workers was finding a place to ply their trade. The housing congestion was beyond description. Even bank tellers and store clerks found themselves living in tents.
01:07:52
Speaker
By spring 1912, things were so bad that the city councillors tried to lease churches downtown as dormitories for women and children who were refused accommodation in hotels. I can't get over the bank tent. Yeah. yeah Yes.
01:08:06
Speaker
Just deposit your money in the tent. Yeah. Don't worry, it's completely secure. got a dog. There's a lock on this box.
01:08:18
Speaker
I put a lock on the tent. It's fine. yeah Making matters worse, one downtown rooming house evicted all its regular male tenants and turned the place into accommodation for sex workers. There were lots of sex workers.
01:08:33
Speaker
In November 1914, a small-time Saskatoon burglar made a statement in Edmonton that resulted in charges against Alderman Joe Clark. This set off an investigation by the Saskatoon Police Department.
01:08:44
Speaker
I know Joe Clark is old, but... Not that Joe Clark. This is Clark with an E. Oh, fair enough. Yep. Makes it old timey.
01:08:55
Speaker
Wait, that's Nixon. Anyways, go on. Criminal Frank Heaton said that as the result of a deal made by Clark with Detective William Springer of Saskatoon, he and two other thugs went to Edmonton to launch a crime spree. with the intention of making the new police chief look bad.
01:09:11
Speaker
He mentioned they had an arrangement with Springer in Saskatoon that gave them protection from arrest there, providing they stuck to burglarizing other places. Clark was able to bring enough witnesses to discredit Heaton's story, and in the end, Heaton himself repudiated the story, and Clark was acquitted. Heaton said that it was all a plot by the new police chief in Edmonton to destroy Clark. It's very convoluted. This is cockamamie. Cockamamie.
01:09:36
Speaker
It's cockamamie scheme. Like, what is this, a sitcom? Yep. Could be a good one. Keaton's original story was enough to prompt the Saskatchewan Attorney General to set up a court of inquiry under Justice E.A.C. McClurg.
01:09:50
Speaker
During the winter of 1915, McClurg listened to testimony from sex workers, policemen, and citizens. When the chief detective wanted a new winter quote, he simply passed word to burglars who did some after-hour shopping for him.
01:10:03
Speaker
Patrolmen were told to leave morality affairs to the detectives. When they didn't do this, there was trouble. Constable Gray reported a complaint from two sex workers that they were hounded from room to room because they wouldn't pay off two detectives.
01:10:17
Speaker
Then when he tried to chase a disorderly woman off his beach, she defied him to touch her because she was a friend of the chief and and a sergeant. So he prodded her on her way. And the next day he was transferred to the windiest, coldest beat in the city.
01:10:31
Speaker
Oh my God.
01:10:37
Speaker
That's the ultimate punishment. I also like the way that sentence came about because it was like, I'm a friend of the chief and I'm a sergeant. No, and a sergeant. I know. I just intentionally misinterpreting that because it's funny for me.
01:10:49
Speaker
Oh, okay. The chief of police resigned when the inquiry was still in progress. He was found guilty of condoning fabrication of evidence and undue oppression of certain women. The detectives were found guilty on all counts, harboring and protecting criminals, inciting criminals to commit theft, taking hush money, fabricating evidence against innocent parties, consorting with bad characters and general laxity.
01:11:12
Speaker
Most of the Saskatoon police force was fired. To protect and serve, baby. Most of the Saskatoon police force was fired. I love it. A new police force was hired, but they still had little success in suppressing prostitution.
01:11:27
Speaker
In suppressing sex work. So Saskatoon... Oh, yeah, yeah. yep I was too slow in the uptake there. The buzzer. So Saskatoon, instead of being a beacon of morality, ended up being just like the other cities, though maybe not quite as bad as Calgary.
01:11:43
Speaker
And I say bad, but I don't mean sex work as being bad. I mean just as much trouble between the police and the sex workers. And also just because Calgary is bad. Yes. I mean, there's that.
01:11:54
Speaker
They never earned those cowboy hats. Except your great grandfather. My great grandfather was a cat boy. Yep. It's a long story. I shouldn't have been wrong. well, maybe we'll... so In 1912...
Calgary's Rapid Growth and Vice
01:12:10
Speaker
Yeah. History of the Catboy Grandpa. Yep. In 1912, Calgary was becoming the booze, brothel, and gambling capital of the Western Plains, and it smelled very strongly of horse.
01:12:21
Speaker
When Calgary's population... You're saying horse. Horse. Okay, like just getting the word right there. Continue. Four-legged. Yeah, yeah. Horse. Horse. Sounds like horse over here. Why would they talk that way? Man, i hate them horse girls.
01:12:41
Speaker
Oh, yeah. When Calgary's population exploded in the first decade of the 1900s, the horse population kept pace. The city was home to one of the biggest stables west of Toronto. This is a story about sex work, right? Where is this going? Wow, we've got all these horses. All these lonely young men. Virile young men. no I'm just establishing Calgary at the time.
01:13:07
Speaker
Fair enough. Okay. There was tons of manure that was piled up into a mountain before being carried away. The stable was located across the tracks from the train station. 60 teams of horses hauled freight. But in 1912, not even 60 teams could keep up with the freight brought in by the Canadian Pacific Railway. Calgary was a dusty, smelly pit of vice.
01:13:28
Speaker
And nothing has changed. yeah Yeah. Sorry, Mom. Yeah. yeah yeah The Calgary boom was the product of the Canadian Pacific Railway's great land promotion schemes. They had sent agents to the Great Plains states to look for settlers and Americans by the tens of thousands flooded into Western Canada. Many of them headed directly for Calgary. That's why it is the way it is.
01:13:54
Speaker
Yeah. Well, Americans make perfect sense to any American listeners. You know how you are. hey American settlers were predominantly Protestant, law-abiding, and proud of it.
01:14:06
Speaker
Crime of any kind was almost unknown. There was a large German colony that took over the Riverside area north of the Bow River. It appeared to be almost saintly when it came to compliance with the law.
01:14:18
Speaker
Calgary was remarkably free of serious crime during its early history. Crime is the lamest founding of a city ever. Yes. God, when you compare this to episode one in Destruction City, how far we fell, even though Destruction City was 20 years later. But continue.
01:14:36
Speaker
The city had needed only a rudimentary police force. Duties of the police officers were primarily breaking up drunken brawls. Had it not been for the alcohol, Calgary police would have been extremely bored.
01:14:48
Speaker
Well, I mean, give them something to do. Yep. Newspapers referred to set the sex workers in Riverside as the women from across the Langevin Bridge.
01:15:00
Speaker
It was an area just outside the city limits, so was the jurisdiction of the Mounties. Calgary aldermen occasionally insisted... on better cooperation between the city police and the Mounties to combat the social evil. But there is no record of that cooperation ever coming to fruition.
01:15:16
Speaker
Shocked. Also, the women across the Langevin Bridge is really a kind of beautiful little turn of phrase. that's It's kind of mellifluous. There's a, you know, it's like the cellar door of describing sex workers. That's right.
01:15:29
Speaker
Very classy yeah euphemism. Very. It's finest euphemism so far. 10 out of 10. Best thing to come out of Calgary. Aside from me. I guess my mom.
01:15:39
Speaker
Yeah. I'm the second best. Okay. Anyways, go on. yeah In February 1907, delegation from Riverside went to the city council to plead for help. Traffic to and from brothels was so heavy that it destroyed the peace of the neighborhood.
01:15:55
Speaker
Respectable residents had to deal with men forcing their way into houses looking for sex workers. Doors needed to be kept locked night and day. Oh, God. That's, yeah, again, another disturbing fact, disturbing scenario.
01:16:09
Speaker
The aldermen were sympathetic, but pointed out how difficult getting a conviction was, especially because most houses were small scale operations. Oh, so they weren't wrong. They weren't wrong to just knock on the door. and Oh, yeah. The police took action against traffic. They cracked down on women going to visit friends for long hours in different parts of the city. But this was of minimal help to the residents.
01:16:31
Speaker
In the months that followed, there was a campaign against sex work led by the pillars of the community. One alderman is quoted as saying, How can the police say there is no prostitution when we continually see these women flaunting themselves in their silks and satins, driving around in hired liveries, and employing Chinese servants?
01:16:52
Speaker
How they? Yeah. ah
01:16:56
Speaker
Soaks and satin Chinese servants. this Sounds like the funny life. Yeah, it sounds pretty good to me. Four men formed the Calgary Citizens Committee, which exerted pressure on the attorney general to get an official inquiry ordered into the Calgary police chief's department.
01:17:14
Speaker
When lawyers tried to prepare for the inquiry, they ran into trouble almost immediately. There was a lack of specific information. So the inquiry chose to focus on six general charges.
01:17:25
Speaker
One, body houses allowed within the city limits with knowledge and consent of the police chief. Two, criminal prosecutions comprised and withdrawn with knowledge and consent of the police chief.
01:17:37
Speaker
Three, intoxicating liquor sold in the city without a license with knowledge and consent of the police chief. I've noticed a trend here. Four, insulting abusive language used in public places towards citizens by the police chief.
01:17:52
Speaker
I know. um That's fantastic. Also, he's an asshole. Five, the police chief didn't act in harmony with members of the force, whereby the interests of the city and justice have suffered.
01:18:09
Speaker
Six, gambling allowed by the police chief. Hmm. Well, it seems to be letting them get away from the law. Sounds like a fun guy. Yeah. It was apparent to the Calgary Citizens Committee and the lawyers that they need concrete accusations to get the ball rolling. So the committee men went out to gather evidence.
01:18:28
Speaker
George Wood, an idealist and social reformer, backed his convictions with his own resources. He was a real estate promoter by day and a dedicated welfare pioneer by night. At his home, he established a rescue home for fallen women and homeless children.
01:18:43
Speaker
From these women, he obtained the addresses of brothels. When he tried to talk to reformed women, they weren't really up for rushing into court to bear their shame to the world as committee witnesses. So the committee needed to find other witnesses.
01:18:57
Speaker
Well, it's not going to rat out all of the women they worked with, right? Yeah, and who wants to... No, it's just going to suck. It's like, I have to do this entire song and dance and like, I have sinned! and Yeah, and who wants to bear their shame?
01:19:12
Speaker
They've had a time. Leave them alone. Knowing sex work existed was one thing, but proving it turned out to be something else entirely. The committee hired Detective W.H. Walker for an undercover investigation, but he turned out to be incompetent. He found places to buy beer, but none of the women solicited him, so he turned up nothing.
01:19:31
Speaker
ah They tried. So they found two manual labor types, both named Charlie. With Wood and a man... I don't know why Charlie's so funny. i just like that there's two people called Charlie.
01:19:44
Speaker
Put a couple of Charlies on it. just going to go into a honeypot trap for ah sex workers. And with Wood and a man named Tappy Frost, they went out on their... What? Oh, stop, stop.
01:19:55
Speaker
Tappy Frost? Yeah, Tappy. That is a... you T-A-P-P-Y. What a name! Oh, incredible. So anyways, with Wood and a man named Tappy Frost, they went out on their own excursions in the dead of winter. Wood and Frost would huddle back by the road while the two Charlies rang doorbells. But they were more afraid of the madams than the madams were of them.
01:20:17
Speaker
When doors opened, they'd blurt out a request for beer. Clearly only idiots would be out looking for beer on a cold night. Idiots are men up to no good. Either way, the madams wanted no part of it.
01:20:28
Speaker
This is the worst sting ever. They're so bad. I'm just imagining these two Charlies. like Can we have beer? away. Imagine ah them as big dumb lugs.
01:20:42
Speaker
Yeah, that's more accurate than that. One girl said she didn't have beer, but if the Charlies wanted something else, it would cost $5. The
Inquiry Ineffectiveness and Criticism
01:20:50
Speaker
men fled in confusion. Oh, that's so good. i don't know what to do, Charlie. Me neither, Charlie. Let's get out of here.
01:21:01
Speaker
The two Charlies were terrible witnesses. They forgot important details of their investigation, and what they did remember was jumbled and confused. Wood and Frost didn't do much better. They were able to pinpoint the existence of sex work, but there was no evidence against the chief of police.
01:21:17
Speaker
The inquiry heard that the reformers all live close to the main brothel area. They and others had been solicited on the streets. Property values went down. I can't get over how they like, find me the two dumbest Charlie you can find. No, too dumb. That's right. Yeah.
01:21:35
Speaker
The commission called three madams to testify to the respectability of their neighborhood. They explained that their income came from investments or properties they owned elsewhere or their husband sent them money. They never sold liquor and saw no disorderly conduct in their neighborhood.
01:21:50
Speaker
Upstanding citizens. There have it. Absolutely. Police Chief Tom English boycotted the inquiry. Judge Stewart lashed out at all involved. The proceedings reflected no credit on any of the participants, he said. Houses of ill repute existed. That much was obvious.
01:22:05
Speaker
The police were ineffective in not knowing about the houses. The charges against the police chief were not proven, but the judge did find it regrettable that English hadn't shown up. The next police chief, Mackie, who was only was only responsible for vice inside the city. As mentioned earlier, it was the Mounties jurisdiction outside the city's. But sex work was only a minor part of Mackie's problem. The population was just growing too fast.
01:22:29
Speaker
The city police had 18 men when Mackie took over for Tom English, and there were 70 by the time he quit a mere two years later. When Mackie joined, policemen qualified through brute strength and ignorance.
01:22:40
Speaker
but The primary fun s the primary requirement to be a cop was physical strength and size. Other desirable features were the ability to read and write, willing to work 12-hour days, seven days a week, and having a, quote, reasonable leaning towards sobriety.
01:22:58
Speaker
What?
01:23:01
Speaker
Hopefully you can read and write. and you're not drunk all the time. Yeah. Sometimes it's okay. Yeah. Now and again, maybe three out of five days. no. Seven days. Five out of seven days.
01:23:14
Speaker
With new bylaws on the books, it was only a matter of months before the police found themselves with more to do than roasting drunks off the street. Yeah. There were new sanitary regulations that had to be enforced. Loose cows and pigs had to be impounded. People used to throwing garbage in alleys had to be reprimanded.
01:23:31
Speaker
Boys riding bikes on sidewalks had to be stopped. Chinese laundries had to stop dumping tubs in ditches. And cars were having such an impact on street regulations that the traffic cop was thrust into existence.
01:23:43
Speaker
The city growing really quickly, you have all these infrastructure challenges for sure. When people going to start fornicating with the horses? Enough with the horses. We left the horses behind. They pooped, and that was enough.
01:23:56
Speaker
Oh, okay. Fair enough. I grossly misread the situation. Carry on. sorry. I just wanted to establish Calgary as it a smelly horse city.
01:24:07
Speaker
That's fair. Beautiful, even. And they're all horse fuckers, damn it. Yeah. That's what Dave wants to hear. Sorry. It could be true. I'm not saying it is true. It's just... It could be. It could be true.
01:24:22
Speaker
When Calgary annexed Nose Creek Flats, Mackie ordered his department to clean out the sex workers. They were immediately confronted with the problem of how? The lawn sex work was... What?
01:24:34
Speaker
A hose? I noticed. Clean out. That struck me. Right. I could have worded that better. That's funny.
01:24:46
Speaker
They were immediately confronted with the problem of how. Oh, I said that. The law and sex work was hazy and successful morals prosecutions were difficult, as evidenced by the Stewart Commission.
01:24:58
Speaker
A few weeks later, Mackie caught a conviction that made headlines. It was expected that this would send sex workers running for cover. Maude Rogers was fined $250 for keeping liquor for sale and $50 for keeping houses of ill fame.
01:25:13
Speaker
For them, $250 is a lot of money. Yeah. Yeah. Three of her women were each given $35 fines for being inmates. These were the stiffest fines ever assessed in Calgary, and it did spread consternation through the business. For a little while, anyways.
01:25:28
Speaker
Klondike Campbell built four large three-story houses in the Nose Creek Hill Coulee, which is a deep, steep-walled, trench-like trough. It's a type of river valley. In case you were wondering.
01:25:40
Speaker
Yes. Because I didn't know what a coulee was. The whole string of words. i had to keep had to go one word at a time. Wait. Nose Creek Hill...
01:25:51
Speaker
Something. When Mackie declared war on the brothels, the women moved across the tracks to the Coulee. Stutterin' May King moved her entire house to the Nose Creek Hill. Wait, Stutterin' May King?
01:26:03
Speaker
Yes. Oh my god! People had much better nicknames back then. Oh, they had such better nicknames back then. Stuttering May King. Yeah, it's not even Stuttering. It's Stuttering.
01:26:16
Speaker
Beautiful. The new location made it one of the most popular in the area. The biggest place was operated by Helen Hubert, who usually employed six or seven women. Nine or ten other brothels set up shop there, and there was a general store, of course.
01:26:30
Speaker
ah Everything you need. The Nose Creek Hill brothels prospered during the construction boom of 1912 and 13. Both Helen Hubert and Stutter and May, quote, took steps to turn their houses into authentic palaces of joy.
01:26:44
Speaker
They brought in pianos and hired piano players, and Calgary nights were filled with music all summer long. Kind of sounds fun. Yeah. On Canadian Pacific Railway's payday nights, residents found it impossible to sleep through the noise.
01:26:58
Speaker
Ha ha ha ha ha. But the brothels had their dark sides, too. The following quote comes from a report written by Superintendent Dean. I don't know what Dean's first name is, or maybe that is his first name.
01:27:10
Speaker
Maybe just a mononym. OK. Yeah. I'm Dean. On April 15 last, a tragedy occurred in the red light district of Nose Creek, which brought that community into prominence for the time being.
01:27:22
Speaker
A man named Joe Moore had sometime previously brought to Calgary a girl named Rose Smith who had left her husband in Brooklyn. She had beaten the girl who left him and took up her abode at Nose Creek.
01:27:33
Speaker
She was afraid of the man and he had reportedly refused not only to return to live with him, but to see him. On this occasion, the girl said he might be admitted to the house and she wanted to speak to him.
01:27:44
Speaker
The subject matter of their conversation can only be inferred, but the inevitable inference is that he requested her to return to him and on her refusal shot her dead, then blew his own brains out. Jesus.
01:27:56
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. That's unfortunate. I kind of wasn't surprised at that ending though, unfortunately. yeah The next chief of police was Alfred Cuddy, who had been an inspector with the Toronto Police Force. He was a professional policeman and undertook to put all the city's brothels out of business. In his seven years as chief, he ultimately failed in his task, but he never stopped trying.
01:28:17
Speaker
Some members of the local Council of Women came up with a resolution for calling for jail sentences for sex workers. Cuddy approved, but he still had the problem that there was nowhere to put them. They couldn't be housed with the men and the old jail was falling apart. It was considered barely suitable for housing animals.
01:28:34
Speaker
And there was only limited accommodation for women prisoners in the guardhouse. So the local council of women amended their resolution and sent it to the Alberta government in Edmonton to build a women's prison.
01:28:45
Speaker
The next year, Calgary built a new jail. Yay. Progress. Yeah, that sucks. So within a year, Cuddy claimed complete success in putting the brothels of the South Cooley out of business.
01:28:57
Speaker
But most of the sex workers just moved downtown. Cuddy never did manage to sweep the city clean. Well, because it's an impossible task. Yeah. yeah Nose Creek Hill survived and still circumstances as much as the police made it less viable. The most important factor in this was World War I. While permanent barracks were being built, the army took over several downtown stores and turned them into living quarters.
01:29:20
Speaker
With the bars and barracks being downtown, it became the obvious place for the sex workers to go. and the Nose Creek Hill brothels were just too far away to compete with the women downtown, so the houses gradually emptied. In his attempts to uplift Calgary's morals, Cuddy got significant help from Prohibition, which officially started on July 1, 1916.
01:29:39
Speaker
Cuddy observed that the abolition of bars prevented every type of crime. Arrests for drunkenness dropped 85% between 1914 and 1917. Cuddy was able to cut the number of police and give them eight-hour days with two days off per month.
01:29:54
Speaker
Under Chief Mackey, they'd be working 12-hour days, seven days a week. That's pretty interesting. So prohibition is this in... wasn't that familiar with the history of prohibition in Canada. Is this in the city just, or it provincial? This is Canada.
01:30:10
Speaker
Yeah, really? No, Canada had prohibition, but it was not as long lasting as the United States and did not leave as much as a permanent mark. But and one of the things which is ah prior to enforcing prohibition from everything I could have everything i know, um drunkenness was genuinely completely out of control.
01:30:31
Speaker
Understanding that human society has been pretty drunk for most of it. This was at an extreme. Yeah, it all happened throughout Faces History, like the gin craze in England in like the yeah, absolutely.
01:30:46
Speaker
Cheap gin became widely available, and it was pretty disastrous for a lot of people. Interesting, I did not know about that in Canada. Despite Cuddy, the Criminal Investigation Division became more tolerant of brothels. Criminals would finish their job and head straight for the brothels, and the morality squad stuck to enforcing liquor and morality laws, staying out of police work.
01:31:07
Speaker
Sex workers survived both Cuddy and World War I and were ready for business when the flow of immigrants started after the war. But Calgary was a different city than it had been before the war.
01:31:18
Speaker
It wasn't the open city that it had been under English and Mackey. The bars were now gone from downtown. Gambling still existed, mostly because it was hard to make charges stick without proof.
01:31:28
Speaker
By 1921, the brothels largely returned to downtown. With the police switching from sex to liquor, the women experienced a switch in tactics with the morality squad. It was a lot easier for the police to catch women with illegal alcohol in their possession, and the fines were greater for booze than sex work.
01:31:45
Speaker
The cost of doing business rose sharply, along with the risk of being caught and fined. Mm-hmm. Downtown was where Pearl Miller launched her 25-year reign as Calgary's most famous sex worker. She turned up in Calgary from somewhere in British Columbia's interior and worked on 6th Avenue until she moved into her own house in 1926. She stayed there until During this time, she established a relationship with the son of one of Calgary's most prominent lawyers.
01:32:12
Speaker
He allegedly walked out on his family to set Pearl up in a house on McLeod Trail in 1929. The house quickly became the most famous one in Calgary. It catered to the highest classes it could attract. Oil men regularly dropped by for a drink, sex, and maybe a bit of bridge with Pearl. Sounds pleasant. Brothels were more than just places that sold sex. They also offered music, alcohol, dancing, and network opportunities.
01:32:37
Speaker
The brothels occupied a special place in settler male culture, and it made them essential to attracting and retaining settler and business presence in settlements. Many officials and investors thought the lack of a segregated vice zone was not only bad for business, but it could also threaten the future of a settlement.
01:32:54
Speaker
For example, the police tried to close down all the brothels in a town near Edmonton in the 1890s, but, quote, after two years, the businessman had raised an objection to the closed town because of the decrease in business.
01:33:06
Speaker
Right, the entire economy. yeah it's like It's like one of the gears that turns within the town economy, and if you move that out, suddenly all the rest of the gears aren't turning. Yeah. Wild. They attributed this to the fact that the town had no attraction for the hundreds of single men employed in various capacities in that section. They maintained that as soon as the men drew their money, they went to one of the neighboring towns to spend it.
01:33:29
Speaker
End quote. Well, right. That's like with oil. What are they called? The camps in like northern Alberta and stuff. It's very similar. There's nothing else to do. So the people that work up there make a ton of money and spend it on like drugs yeah and sex workers.
01:33:46
Speaker
Yes. This is very similar also to, you know, just your businessmen meeting downtown, going to the brothels. It's like them going to strip clubs sort of. ah Fort McMurray. Yeah, right. Yeah. You have this large, large number of men crashing into that and then getting a ton of money. And particularly during the boom times, it was all sex work and drugs, right?
01:34:05
Speaker
Where the money would go. Eventually, Pearl decided that she could do even better with a different location. In 1935, she bought a house on the edge of Mount Royal, the most posh residential district in the city. And things were great while they lasted, which was until 1939.
01:34:20
Speaker
As a result of mounting police pressure following complaints from the neighbors, Pearl relocated herself back to her original Calgary location. She spent the war years there and retired in 1950. Legend. Yeah.
01:34:32
Speaker
After Pearl's retirement, she caught a taste of religion. She made regular visits to her old haunts in order to try to save the women following in her footsteps. She died in 1957, Calgary legend. Citizens, quote, wove their favorite fantasies and told their biggest lies. Oh, that's how you want to live on. Everyone making up shit about you. Yep, there you go. A legend indeed.
Conclusion and Call for Legal Reform
01:34:56
Speaker
Yeah. The biggest one of all was the one the Calgary Highlanders told about the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry and vice versa. Quote, the Pats were camped next to an American outfit before D-Day, and one of the Americans, who were great on slogans, tacked one up in the sergeant's mess, which read, Remember Pearl Harbor.
01:35:15
Speaker
The Pats went back to their outfit and had a sign painted to express their own feelings. It read, To hell with Pearl Harbor. Remember Pearl Miller. ah There you go. Incredible. So in conclusion, I just want to stress that moral judgments about sex workers are pointless and even harmful. Sex work just is.
01:35:32
Speaker
The stories I've learned about and told here show again and again that sex work came with settler culture and is linked so intrinsically that it would be impossible to consider what these cities would be like without it.
01:35:44
Speaker
The incredible moral imperative from the deeply religious, strict laws and stricter enforcement just made a mess and hurt people rather than eradicating the industry. The moralizing doesn't fix anything.
01:35:56
Speaker
I'd like to say that I don't have any answers coming out of this, but the stories here have made me realize that because sex work is here to stay, the sex worker should be projected. Legalize the sex industry, unionize it and keep women safe.
01:36:08
Speaker
Hell yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm. And that's the story of sex work on the Canadian prairies. That's fascinating. I had no idea. Yeah, it's not something that's ever talked about. No, all this history is very well hidden for a reason. I guess it's considered unsavory, but it is labor history, too. Yeah, that's social history one of the things I like about what we're doing this podcast is we can tell these labor stories and tell them as labor stories and ah just sort of recognize sort of the social forces at play here. And that, again, whether sex work is good or bad or not doesn't really matter. It just is. And the people who perform this work
01:36:47
Speaker
need safety dignity respect good pay reliable work and benefits yeah like anybody else yep yeah well that's a really good uh episode tracy about history of sex work on the prairies thank you i find that uh yeah super fascinating okay bye everyone bye bye thank you for listening to the wonder camera find us under the wonder camera on blue sky youtube and instagram