Vancouver prostitution Mia Bella is quite comfortable with the work she does. Other people are less so. She's a prostitute. Mia Bella is quite comfortable with the work she does. One time last summer, she explains, she was out picking up some groceries at the Save-On-Foods near her home in Victoria when a friendly older woman at the produce counter asked why she needed so many blueberries.
As Bella shared her favourite recipe for blueberry oatmeal, the two got talking. The woman asked what she did for a living. Bella not her real name says she first did sex work four years ago because she wanted to go on a two-month fishing trip in Fiji. She needed the cash to advance her rent, and a girlfriend suggested they do a few jobs at a body rub parlour.
Bella, on the other hand, loved it, and today the year-old works as an independent escort. Those kinds of things are so rewarding. It is not of successful, self-assured entrepreneurs like Bella, and that bothers her. However, prostitution in Canada is far from a legitimate business, despite the fact the practice is technically legal. A bewildering mix of rules is in place to restrict it, making it almost impossible to run a legal business involving sexual contact.
So prostitution is an outcast industry β hidden in dark alleys, hushed apartments, anonymous hotels, and small businesses with no windows. Bella is one of many B. Historically, keeping the sex industry out of sight was relatively easy, with authorities and residents chasing outside sex workers from one neighbourhood to another. The Downtown Eastside has long been the exception: sex workers have had a near-constant home there since the birth of the city over years ago.
History indicates they may not be. If the same sort of thing happens in the Downtown Eastside, where will the trade go next? That question worries Patricia Barnes, director of the neighbouring Hastings North Business Improvement Association BIA , whose territory covers the commercial strip along Hastings Street east of Commercial Drive as well as a swath of light industry stretching south from the Vancouver port.
