Davie Village (also known as Davie District or simply Davie Street) is a neighbourhood in the
West End of
Vancouver
Vancouver ( ) is a major city in western Canada, located in the Lower Mainland region of British Columbia. As the List of cities in British Columbia, most populous city in the province, the 2021 Canadian census recorded 662,248 people in the ...
,
British Columbia
British Columbia (commonly abbreviated as BC) is the westernmost province of Canada, situated between the Pacific Ocean and the Rocky Mountains. It has a diverse geography, with rugged landscapes that include rocky coastlines, sandy beaches, ...
, Canada. It is the home of the city's
LGBT
' is an initialism that stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender. In use since the 1990s, the initialism, as well as some of its common variants, functions as an umbrella term for sexuality and gender identity.
The LGBT term is a ...
subculture, and, as such, is often considered a
gay village
A gay village is a geographical area with generally recognized boundaries that is inhabited or frequented by many lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBT) people. Gay villages often contain a number of gay-oriented establish ...
, or ''gaybourhood''. Davie Village is centred on Davie Street and roughly includes the area between
Burrard and Jervis streets. Davie Street—and, by extension, the Village—is named in honour of
A.E.B. Davie
Alexander Edmund Batson Davie, QC, referred to as A. E. B. Davie (November 24, 1847 – August 1, 1889), was the eighth premier of British Columbia. He served in office from 1887 until his death in 1889.
Called to the bar in 1873, he was the f ...
, eighth
Premier of British Columbia
Premier is a title for the head of government in central governments, state governments and local governments of some countries. A second in command to a premier is designated as a deputy premier.
A premier will normally be a head of governm ...
from 1887 to 1889; A.E.B's brother
Theodore
Theodore may refer to:
Places
* Theodore, Alabama, United States
* Theodore, Australian Capital Territory
* Theodore, Queensland, a town in the Shire of Banana, Australia
* Theodore, Saskatchewan, Canada
* Theodore Reservoir, a lake in Sask ...
was also Premier, from 1892 to 1895.
Overview
Along Davie Street are a variety of shops, restaurants, services, and hotels catering to a variety of customers, in addition to private residences. The business with the most notoriety is
Little Sister's Book and Art Emporium
Little Sister's Book and Art Emporium, also known as Little Sister's Bookstore, but usually called "Little Sister's", is an independent bookstore in the Davie Village/ West End neighbourhood of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. The bookstore wa ...
("Little Sister's"), a gay and lesbian bookstore, because of its ongoing legal battles with
Canada Customs
The Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA; french: Agence des services frontaliers du Canada, ''ASFC'') is a federal law enforcement agency that is responsible for border control (i.e. protection and surveillance), immigration enforcement, and cust ...
that have received extensive national media coverage. Many businesses and residents along Davie Street and in the West End generally also fly rainbow flags as a symbol of gay pride, and many of the covered bus stop benches and garbage cans along Davie Street are painted bright pink.
Scene
*
Numbers (Vancouver)
*
The Junction (Vancouver)
The Junction Public House, also known as The Junction Pub and most often abridged as The Junction, is a gay bar and nightclub in Davie Village, Vancouver, British Columbia. The club was formerly known as Pulse.
Description
The Junction is a gay ba ...
1181 (Vancouver)
Festivals
The Village hosts a variety of events during the year, including the Davie Street Pride Festival which runs in conjunction with Vancouver's annual
Gay Pride Parade
A pride parade (also known as pride march, pride event, or pride festival) is an outdoor event celebrating lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer culture, queer (LGBTQ) social and self-acceptance, achievements, LGBT rights by country o ...
, during which sections of the street are closed to motor traffic.
Davie Day is also held each year in early September, to celebrate local businesses and the community itself. This Day is designed to build awareness and promote the surrounding businesses, and is focused around Jervis to
Burrard Street
Burrard Street is a major thoroughfare in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. It is the central street of Downtown Vancouver and the Financial District. The street is named for Burrard Inlet, located at its northern terminus, which in turn is ...
.
Business Association
The
Davie Street Business Association
Davie is a surname and a form of the masculine given name David.
It can refer to:
Surname
* Alan Davie (1920-2014), Scottish painter and musician
* Alexander Edmund Batson Davie (1847-1889), Canadian politician and eighth Premier of British Co ...
coined the name "Davie Village" in 1999 and also commissioned banners from local artist
Joe Average
Joe Average (born October 10, 1957, as Brock David Tebbutt) is a Canadian artist who resides in Vancouver, British Columbia. Diagnosed HIV+ at age 27, Average made the decision to commit the rest of his life to art, and to challenge himself to ...
, which fly from lampposts in the district. The two-sided banners depict a rainbow flag on one side and a sun design by Average on the other.
Davie Village is also home to the offices of ''
Xtra! West
''Xtra Vancouver'' (), formerly ''Xtra! West'', was a gay bi-weekly newspaper, published by Pink Triangle Press in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
Printed on newsprint in tabloid format from its establishment in 1993, Pink Triangle Press ...
'', a biweekly
LGBT
' is an initialism that stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender. In use since the 1990s, the initialism, as well as some of its common variants, functions as an umbrella term for sexuality and gender identity.
The LGBT term is a ...
newspaper,
Qmunity
Qmunity (officially Qmunity, BC's Queer, Trans, and Two-Spirit Resource Centre Society), formerly known as the Centre, is an LGBT community centre located on Bute Street in the Davie Village neighbourhood of the West End of Vancouver, British ...
(formerly the Gay and Lesbian Centre) which provides a variety of services for the city's
lesbian
A lesbian is a Homosexuality, homosexual woman.Zimmerman, p. 453. The word is also used for women in relation to their sexual identity or sexual behavior, regardless of sexual orientation, or as an adjective to characterize or associate n ...
,
gay
''Gay'' is a term that primarily refers to a homosexual person or the trait of being homosexual. The term originally meant 'carefree', 'cheerful', or 'bright and showy'.
While scant usage referring to male homosexuality dates to the late 1 ...
,
bisexual
Bisexuality is a romantic or sexual attraction or behavior toward both males and females, or to more than one gender. It may also be defined to include romantic or sexual attraction to people regardless of their sex or gender identity, whi ...
, and
transgender
A transgender (often abbreviated as trans) person is someone whose gender identity or gender expression does not correspond with their sex assigned at birth. Many transgender people experience dysphoria, which they seek to alleviate through tr ...
residents, and the Vancouver Pride Society, which puts on the annual
Pride Parade and Festival.
Sex work history
In the 1960s, after the removal of the
Dupont
DuPont de Nemours, Inc., commonly shortened to DuPont, is an American multinational chemical company first formed in 1802 by French-American chemist and industrialist Éleuthère Irénée du Pont de Nemours. The company played a major role in ...
and Alexander Street Districts, Vancouver's sex workers relocated to the streets of the
West End. By the 1970s, over 150 workers could be seen walking on and around Davie Street from twelve to three AM on a regular occasion.
By the 1970s, the area had a visible sex work scene, and was coined the “Prostitution Capitol of Canada”.
[Cole, Dale, J. (Director). (1984). ''Hookers on Davie'' ]ideo file
IDEO () is a design firm, design and consulting firm with offices in the U.S., England, Germany, Japan, and China. It was founded in Palo Alto, California, in 1991. The company's 700 staff uses a design thinking approach to design products, serv ...
Canada: Spectrum Films. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3ixQS_Ihdk Jamie Lee Hamilton
Jamie Lee Hamilton (September 20, 1955 – December 23, 2019) was a Canadian political candidate and advocate of aboriginal people, residents of Vancouver's poverty-stricken Downtown Eastside, and sex trade workers. She was an independent candid ...
, a former worker within the area, claims in a ''The Volcano'' article that the neighbourhood was “dignified outdoor brothel culture".
The working population included both cisgender, transgender,
two-spirit
Two-spirit (also two spirit, 2S or, occasionally, twospirited) is a modern, , umbrella term used by some Indigenous North Americans to describe Native people in their communities who fulfill a traditional third-gender (or other gender-variant) ...
, and crossdressing individuals of different ages and ethnicities; many of which first came to the street as early as twelve years old, and since, have built a community with their peers, creating bonds by working together and looking out for each other's safety. In 1980, when Davie Street started to generate profit off of queer owned properties and business aesthetics, the visible state of the sex work scene became more and more unwanted. Within little time, the removal of this image became the main focus of erasure. In preparation for the 1986 World Fair, Davie Street soon began sculpting an image of what they felt suited the ideal gay community, which included the forceful displacement of the West Ends’ sex work community.
In 1983, a group called the Concerned Residents of the West End (CROWE), consisting of primarily white cisgender gay businessmen, worked with the city to get a BC Supreme Court injunction to displace trans sex workers.
Workers in the area were pushed into
Yaletown
Yaletown is an area of Downtown Vancouver, Canada, bordered by False Creek and Robson and Homer Streets. Formerly a heavy industrial area dominated by warehouses and rail yards, since the 1986 World's Fair it has been transformed into one of the ...
, then
Mount Pleasant, where they were repeatedly protested by "Shame the Johns vigilantes", down East Broadway, and eventually into the
Downtown Eastside
The Downtown Eastside (DTES) is a neighbourhood in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. One of the city's oldest neighbourhoods, the DTES is the site of a complex set of social issues including disproportionately high levels of drug use, homeles ...
, where already vulnerable sex workers are more open to violence and abuse than ever before.
This relocation also contributed many of the
Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG) cases that were largely tied to serial killer
Robert Pickton
Robert William "Willy" Pickton (born October 24, 1949) is a Canadian serial killer and former pig farmer. He is suspected of being one of the most prolific serial killers in Canadian history.
After dropping out of school, Pickton left a butcher ...
in the early 2000s.
Apart from the annual Red Umbrella March and
Women's Memorial March The Women's Memorial March is an annual event which occurs on February 14 in remembrance and in honour of the lives of missing and murdered indigenous women. This event is also a protest against class disparity, racism, inequality and violence. The ...
, the history of the West Ends’ sex work community remains largely forgotten. While portraying an accepting and inclusive LGBTQ2A+ environment, the history remains intentionally masked with little memorabilia of those impacted by the erasure.
Significant sites
* West End Sex Worker Memorial: Corner of Jervis and Pendrell Street
Supporting businesses
*
Little Sisters Book and Art Emporium
* Speakeasy Bar and Grill
Media documentation
* ''
Hookers on Davie
''Hookers on Davie'' is a Canadian documentary film, directed by Janis Cole and Holly Dale and released in 1984.Carole Corbeil, "Filmmakers provide hookers with a voice". ''The Globe and Mail'', March 30, 1984. A portrait of a number of women, bo ...
''
See also
*
Bank Street (Ottawa)
Bank Street (French: ''Rue Bank'') is the major commercial north-south street in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. It runs south from Wellington Street in downtown Ottawa, south through the neighbourhoods of Centretown, The Glebe, Old Ottawa South, Alta ...
*
Church and Wellesley Village, Toronto
*
Gay Village, Montreal
, native_name_lang =
, settlement_type = Neighbourhood
, image_skyline = Saint Catherine Street, rainbow, Montreal 1.jpg
, image_alt =
, image_caption = A partial view of Montreal's Gay Villag ...
*
LGBT culture in Vancouver
Vancouver's (British Columbia, Canada) LGBT community is centered on Davie Village. Historically, LGBT people have also gathered in the Chinatown and Gastown neighborhoods. Former establishments include Dino's Turkish Baths, a gay bathhouse on H ...
References
External links
Official Davie Village website
{{LGBT in Canada
Gay villages in Canada
LGBT culture in Vancouver
Neighbourhoods in Vancouver
West End, Vancouver