At Home on the Stroll: My Twenty Years as a Prostitute in Canada

Andrea Levan is an associate professor and co-ordinator of the Women’s
Studies Program at Thorneloe College, Laurentian University.

At Home on the Stroll is a first-person account of the author’s
experiences working as a prostitute beginning in the early 1970s.
Highcrest came to Toronto as a young (male) university student and
entered prostitution quite by accident, as a result of being
propositioned while hitchhiking. Her 20-year career included building a
group of clients through word of mouth, managing an escort service in
Sault Ste. Marie, working as an outreach worker for Maggie’s (a
community organization advocating on behalf of and educating
prostitutes), and serving as political spokesperson for CORP (Canadian
Organization for the Rights of Prostitutes). After years of living “in
transition,” Highcrest underwent a sex-change operation.

The book, an interesting mix of anecdotes and commentary on the
treatment of prostitution in Canada, is engagingly written, with a
conversational style equally well suited to descriptions of interactions
with customers and to heartfelt commentary on the law, on politicians,
and on the interventions of community agencies. Highcrest dismisses many
of the common assertions about prostitutes. For example she argues that
few are juveniles, that few have pimps (and that some of those who do
have respectful and mutually desired business relationships with them),
and that violence from customers and pimps is far less common than
police brutality. Highcrest decided to become politically active after
witnessing a police officer beat a streetwalker. She emphatically
maintains that prostitution is a job and that decriminalization would be
the most effective way to minimize both the dangers and the nuisance
value associated with this type of work.

The book contains no documentation, and some of the author’s
positions, which are based only on her own observations, are
contradicted by more scholarly work. Nevertheless, Highcrest retains a
strong and well-founded air of authority that stems from her position as
an insider with an extensive knowledge of the scene.