Hooker Harvey's is a

Harvey's Harvey's is a fast food restaurant chain operating in Canada, with locations in every province except British Columbia. It serves hamburgers, poutine, hot dogs, french fries, onion rings, and other traditional Canadian cuisine, Canadian fast-food ...

franchise in

Toronto Toronto ( , locally pronounced or ) is the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, most populous city in Canada. It is the capital city of the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Ontario. With a p ...

, Ontario, Canada notable for having been a hub for

prostitution Prostitution is a type of sex work that involves engaging in sexual activity in exchange for payment. The definition of "sexual activity" varies, and is often defined as an activity requiring physical contact (e.g., sexual intercourse, no ...

History

In the 1960s, Toronto's

Jarvis Street Jarvis Street is a north-south thoroughfare in downtown Toronto, Ontario, Canada, passing through some of the oldest developed areas in the city. Its alignment extends from Queens Quay East in the south to Bloor Street in the north. The segment ...

was a hub for the sex trade, with the surrounding area containing strip clubs such as Zanzibar Tavern and adult movie theatres. This led to the parking lot of the Harvey's franchise in that area to become a burgeoning sexual marketplace, giving this particular franchise its common nickname of ''Hooker Harvey's''. The Jarvis and Church street area is considered by Robyn Doolittle of the

Toronto Star The ''Toronto Star'' is a Canadian English-language broadsheet daily newspaper. It is owned by Toronto Star Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary of Torstar Corporation and part of Torstar's Daily News Brands (Torstar), Daily News Brands division. ...

to be an especially high-end area of the Toronto street prostitution scene. Workers can earn up to $300 a

client Client(s) or The Client may refer to: * Client (business) * Client (computing), hardware or software that accesses a remote service on another computer * Customer or client, a recipient of goods or services in return for monetary or other valuable ...

, with one woman named Ebony quoting her services for hundreds of dollars an hour in the Harvey's franchise's parking lot. Toronto's street prostitution scene is so lucrative due to Canada's laws surrounding prostitution, which used to criminalize activities such as operating

brothels A brothel, strumpet house, bordello, bawdy house, ranch, house of ill repute, house of ill fame, or whorehouse is a place where people engage in sexual activity with prostitutes. For legal or cultural reasons, establishments often describe t ...

but not the actual act of prostitution itself. This meant it was legally safer for prostitutes to offer their services on the street rather than indoors. However, in 2013, these laws were struck down in the case

Canada (AG) v Bedford is a decision of the Supreme Court of Canada on the Canadian law of sex work. The applicants, Terri-Jean Bedford, Amy Lebovitch and Valerie Scott, argued that Canada's prostitution laws were unconstitutional. The ''Criminal Code'' included a numbe ...

and were replaced with legislation criminalizing the purchase of sex work, but not the selling. Over the years, Hooker Harvey's has endured many attempts to remove sex workers from the location. In 2009, roadwork blocked the sidewalk outside of the Harvey's, making it difficult to solicit customers and resulting in many sex workers leaving the location. In 2017, a rumour on social media spread claiming that a

condominium A condominium (or condo for short) is an ownership regime in which a building (or group of buildings) is divided into multiple units that are either each separately owned, or owned in common with exclusive rights of occupation by individual own ...

would be built in Hooker Harvey's location. However, the City of Toronto later said there were no plans to demolish the location.

In popular culture

Hooker Harvey's has also been the subject of artwork, with the anonymous digital artist Voidz publishing a digital rendering of a fake visual art installation outside of Harvey's franchise. Voidz described the franchise as a "legendary Toronto icon" and said that the location was representative of Toronto's culture of dark humour.

References

{{reflist Restaurants in Toronto Prostitution in Canada