SEX AND HISTORY

Led by University of Toronto Professor, Dr. L.K. Bertram, our team has been building on the best research in the field and new critical studies on the history of prostitution in North America since 2010. Our work is based on the belief that accurate histories of sex work are essential to making quality, informed legal decisions about sex work economies today and that sex workers have a right to understand and access histories of their industry and generations past. Our team also runs a larger, anonymous open history classroom for sex workers on Instagram (40m views) and together with teams of emerging student and community researchers at the University of Toronto, we uncovered the location of more than 100 brothels in the City of Toronto between 1840 and 1917 after a decade analyzing historical Toronto court reports.

Proceeds from our tour go towards outreach, research and development, and defending public access to accurate histories of sex work. Book your ticket here.

Want more? Check out this article in the Journal of Social History on why brothels were essential to the creation of Canadian cities.

Bertram, L. K. “The Other Little House: The Brothel as a Colonial Institution on the Canadian Prairies, 1880–93.” Journal of Social History 56, no. 1 (2022): 58-88.