Prostitution in Canada

During the 1880s advocates of “social purity” began to demand the eradication of prostitution in Canada. These reformers caught the ear of federal legislators, who passed a series of enactments in the 1880s that broadened the scope of criminal prohibitions of prostitution. Police forces increased the number of raids on brothels and made more arrests, but it is not known how effective these measures were. Winnipeg had more than 50 houses of prostitution around 1910 and attempted to control the problem with a segregated red-light district, which existed until the 1930s. In Montreal there was already widespread indignation at the apparent tolerance by the police of crimes involving vice (mainly prostitution and gambling). A judicial inquiry opened in Montreal in 1924 shed light in particular on a widespread system of corruption, in which officers took bribes to protect gambling dens and brothels. At the time some people began to assert that prostitution was a socio-economic issue rather than a moral one, which only social reform, not punishment, would abolish.