Sunday 8 June 1997
The 29-year-old woman at a Vanier bar sips a beer, drags on her cigarette, and looks out the window at cars moving along Montreal Road.
"Just look at these old people going down the street," she says, her voice trailing off before she rants about bare-breasted prostitutes reportedly roaming the same street. "Are those senior citizens going to tolerate topless prostitutes? Are church-going families?
"Society has got to have respect for society," she says.
Reports of topless prostitutes in Vanier have people upset, but this woman has more cause to be upset than most. She is, after all, a prostitute. And, as do most Vanier prostitutes, she wears a shirt while working.
"Just call me Red Rider," she says.
Yesterday afternoon, Ms. Rider was walking down Montreal Road in search of clients. But she wasn't flashing her breasts. Nor would she.
"That's my business. I'd like to keep it that way. I think the women who want to expose their (breasts) should stay in strip clubs.
"I've got little ones," said Ms. Rider, who finds men like her smile and "bright eyes" more than her chest.
Last week, drivers cruised the strip in search of topless prostitutes -- an unthinkable proposition before a court ruling made it perfectly legal for women to be seen in public without covering their breasts.
But a volunteer who works with the prostitutes said "flashings" were isolated incidents.
"It's just this one group of girls that hang out together that did it and thought it would be a joke," said Cathy Fordham. She knows of only two such incidents last week.
Since January, the 26-year-old student has, with others, handed out cards with a phone number hookers can call to get help. Ms. Fordham also records records license plate numbers of Johns, and passes the information to police.
The big trouble in Vanier is not half-naked prostitutes, but the "yahoos" who are now cruising the streets yelling things like, "Flash 'em baby," or "Show us what you got," at any woman they see, Ms. Fordham said.
Residents now hope the hoopla, as well as the traffic, dies down.
"You should have seen the traffic while it was going on," said longtime Vanier resident May Larivire. "The whole damn bunch of them are all crazy, the things that they do."