Montreal Open City: Prostitution in the Metropolis in the 1920s

When League of Nations undercover investigator Paul Kinsie visited Montreal in 1926, his informers told him that the red-light district had been suppressed more than a year earlier. Yet he had no difficulty in finding madams to interview, or drawing up a list of the “better middle-class resorts” that he visited, all but one situated in what was known as the red-light district in Montreal. The metropolis had long had a reputation as a centre of prostitution and it made sense for Kinsie to add that Canadian city to his investigation of North American cities.