Vancouver Adult Entertainment: Vancouver: More than the hype – and less
The otherwise impressively fair-minded and persuasive work is marred by a few puzzling omissions that seem hard to explain as anything other than lapses into professional or political spite. Campbell’s left-wing opponents within his own caucus during his term as mayor, for example, receive little narrative attention, and the explosive fracturing of his majority – which might have been able to do more to address the tragedy of the Downtown Eastside absent his heavy-handed leadership – does not, perhaps unsurprisingly, get the attention it deserves. And the work of Simon Fraser University researcher (and Neil Boyd colleague) John Lowman, which brilliantly documents the lethal stupidity of Canadian prostitution law, is mentioned only once, and parenthetically at that.
Most of the book’s suggestions for reform – saner prostitution and drug policies, adequate social housing and more effective outreach to the vulnerable – are sound and have been heard before. What remains to be seen is whether we can muster the political will to make them work. I …