The life of a small-town sex worker

One local woman’s journey

Advocate writer Denise Waldron spent eight months looking for a local, self-employed sex worker who would speak to us for this story. Waldron even joined a Lindsay fetish group and spent time at local watering holes. Ultimately, it was a Facebook post that helped her find a well-spoken, articulate sex worker. She conducted five separate interviews in short increments, in case there was trauma to be re-lived.

Jennifer Jade’s morning consisted of the chores woven into daily life while she raised her daughter and ran her own business. Brushing teeth and hair. Breakfast sizzling. A load of laundry. Packing her child’s school bag. The mundane stuff. Routine tasks that anchored her life, even as her work existed far outside the typical nine-to-five job.

She was the mom you’d see at the local playgroup. Or nursing her exclusively breast-fed baby at a La Leche League meeting. You might have seen her cheering for her daughter at a sports event. Perhaps at the school auditorium she sat beside you beaming, as her daughter received honours and won academic awards.

Eloquent and well-spoken, Jade is 5’ 6” with long hair, and wears very little make-up — the natural beauty of the girl next door, really.

Most mornings after domestic chores, Jade was on her computer and checking her messages — not for romance, but for work. Her business was pleasure, but her story is about power.

Jade is a Renaissance woman. Over the years, she has poured herself into a wide range of jobs: pumping gas at 12, caring for the vulnerable, supporting at-risk teens, and earning a license in a male-dominated trade. Still, no role matched the longevity or earning power of the one she kept mostly quiet — her work in the sex trade in Kawartha Lakes.

In some ways, her Kawartha Lakes childhood was unremarkable. Church. Chores. Playing with her farm animals. Swimming at Emily Provincial Park. Rural fairs. Attending one of the faith-based schools in Kawartha Lakes — a tight little rural bubble.

Jade said she always felt different. She attended church and school with the same children and was not really part of the wider community. She describes herself as a free-spirited child who was often told she was “too much” — loud, excited, and expressing herself through bright, different clothes.

Growing up, Jade said sex was always a part of her life, “like brushing your teeth.” She started being sexually abused by two male relatives around the age of eight or nine. One of them lived in her house — both were religious. Early sexual experiences left her numb to the facts. “Almost like the cliche sex is love, and how it’s okay if I give all these boys attention — then they’ll love me and I’ll feel love,” she tells the Advocate.

Despite this trauma, she describes her childhood as pretty happy overall, with a mother who was involved as much as she could be, though Jade admits she didn’t feel truly loved or supported.

While her father was an alcoholic and she knew to stay out of his way, she insists on the nuance that he was not one of her abusers.

At age 12, Jade had a teacher who she described as a “positive ray of sunshine and very approachable.” She confided to the teacher about her abuse at the hands of the two men. The police picked Jade up and took her to the station over the lunch hour. She was set up in an interrogation room with one officer and a video camera. Her mother was livid at not having been notified.

The abusive male relative who lived in Jade’s home then spent two years in a government facility. The other male relative took the secret to his grave.

While the therapy she received didn’t help the tween understand what had happened, it was a bright spot in her week. She was able to miss school, have alone time with her mom and get a treat. “I don’t think I had the full understanding of the long-term trauma that could come from that.”

In high school, Jade was sexually active and became pregnant at 14. The baby’s father was a family friend (also in high school) and her first boyfriend. He was unable to help raise their baby or provide for them financially. “He’s kind of a Lindsay low life,” Jade said as he struggled with substance abuse, while she wasn’t one to use drugs.

The community stepped up. Her teachers and school counsellors were understanding and helped Jade navigate her pregnancy and the birth of baby Elizabeth. She received help from a pregnancy centre and a breastfeeding group. “They were very supportive, making sure I had the resources that I needed to be prepared for when she came.”

Bleary-eyed and tired with her infant, 15-year-old Jade packed her backpack and a diaper bag onto the school bus three months later.

A quick milk nuzzle if needed, and Jade was off to classes, aware that her baby was well-taken care of at the childcare centre at I.E. Weldon Secondary School. Lunches were spent nursing and cuddling Elizabeth. Jade provided her with the love she herself felt she missed as a child. She was not an anomaly there — other teen moms were navigating evening feedings and classes too.

Despite her young pregnancy, Jade graduated high school.

As sex was a background noise of her childhood, Jade was in survival mode with no real space to imagine a future — until she moved in with a relative in a small Ontario city and attended college. “I really didn’t have much ambition or goals in life to dream of.”

In college, she imagined herself in a crisp suit working a nine-to-five corporate job. But distance from her “extremely religious” family gave her something she’d never had growing up in Kawartha Lakes: anonymity and room to explore. There were new friends, late nights, and a social world she’d skipped while raising a baby. The rush of reclaimed adolescence was too much to balance with school, and eventually she left college.

Jade, 18 at the time, needed money to survive and raise her toddler. She answered an ad in the back of the local newspaper for a “call girl” and was hired by a couple. They safely arranged clients and provided a driver to take her to and from clients — mostly at night. She was never trafficked by the couple.

Her first call was empowering, exciting, and well paid. She said she was skillful in sex work. “It was easy. I was never scared.”

Jade said she enjoyed the unknown. “Who are we going to meet today (and) what’s going to happen?”

“I had repeat clients and it was nice to feel wanted.” People were calling requesting her, and Jade quickly had a waiting list. She said it was an early sense of being, “wanted and valued.”

Jade soon went on her own, using the internet to connect with clients, and while it was not the corporate position she had imagined for herself, it was sex as agency and income, in contrast to sex as childhood trauma.

Alisha Fisher is the community services manager at Women’s Resources of Kawartha Lakes. She said the agency supports clients who engage in sex work by focusing on safety and empowerment rather than judgment.

Fisher outlined safety concerns for sex workers, particularly regarding online work. She emphasized the importance of digital safety measures such as using VPNs, turning off location sharing on social media platforms and photos, and being cautious about information sharing. For in-person work, she discussed harm reduction strategies, including safer sex practices, STI testing, and location sharing with trusted contacts.

Jade’s childhood sexual abuse normalized sex, blurred boundaries and may have shaped her later choices around sex work, but she can’t say it was causation in her case. “The power to be in control of my own body and choices, along with financial freedom, and to not be dependent on others was a key factor.”

Jade took a page out of the film, Pretty Woman, and started a relationship with a client. Her boyfriend was definitely not Richard Gere’s character, Edward Lewis, in the film. His drug use doomed the relationship.

Jade moved back to Kawartha Lakes around 2010 and continued sex work. With a smaller community, running into a client was always a possibility. She was pragmatic about it, noting if she saw a client in a store, there might be a nod, a quick hello or they would ignore each other, noting she never made it awkward.

She partnered with a local woman to work in Toronto a few times a week as well. Jade said by sheer volume, they could each make $1,500 ($2,300 in 2026) a day in 2010 due to a larger population. They rented a hotel room and took turns with men, with one in the room and the other waiting in the lobby before switching places.

Night work was off the table as that’s when the rowdier or intoxicated clients showed up. She started work at 5 a.m., for the business crowd before work. The next group showed up at lunch. Jade also set prices high enough to filter out riskier clients.

Jade only felt vulnerable once, in Toronto. She had a client who didn’t want to pay but still wanted services. Jade said no, and he moved towards her. “I quickly put him in a choke hold.” Fortuitously, her partner came in, and the client took off. Her elementary school kickboxing lessons paid off.

Jade’s work existed on the higher and safer end of a very uneven spectrum. Working from hotel rooms with pre-arranged clients gave her a level of control that women on the streets — or those living in encampments, where men may arrive intoxicated or offering drugs — often don’t have.

Fisher said within the sex worker world, their internal status is described as a whorearchy — a portmanteau of whore and hierarchy, or the whore ladder. It’s a phrase that was coined in 1990 by sex workers themselves, as an internal class system.

The system of perceived ranking is based on the service provided, the setting, or the worker’s characteristics. This reflects that some types of sex work are more acceptable or better than others.

Fisher said the hierarchy is used to kind of create further discussions around stigma, due to things like “racism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, fat phobia, as well as other types of prejudices that kind of come up with that.”

“Sex worker” is the term most workers prefer, although prostitute is still used in our legal system according to Fisher.

Some sex workers bill from their ala carte menu, but Jade charged by time. If someone paid for a 15-minute session for oral sex and it only took five minutes, they would usually just chat afterwards.

Her clients ran the gamut — businessmen, young men, older men — each wanting something different. For some, it was purely physical. For others, it was companionship, conversation, or a safe place to unload the stresses of their lives. “Some were just lonely.” she said. “I was like pretty therapy.”

One client always brought wine and cheese and gave Jade a back massage. She especially enjoyed older businessmen; they were her favourite “because they’re very intellectually smart and open to sharing information.” Some clients wanted to give her pleasure rather than have their own needs met. “They wanted to treat me and make sure I felt good, which was nice.”

Jade’s boundaries included no kissing, always using condoms and barrier methods of birth control, and clients showering first. She would not entertain very weird requests. One man liked to brush her long, chestnut hair and give it a little trim. She was okay with that request.

While not exactly the duality of the Madonna/whore complex, Jade did have clients who were married, and admitted they just wanted something different.

A Choice

Is there an upper age for sex work? Jade does not think so. She said some want older women, “the cougars” and others want the 19-year-old-looking college girls. “Everybody’s got a preference. There’s a niche for everybody in the industry.”

Jade’s advice for women who fear their partner may stray with a sex worker? “Just worry about you.” She adds if your guy wants to cheat, he will. “If you’re having to change who you are, to please somebody else — that’s a red flag right there. And you already are doomed.”

Jade Today

Today, Jade is in her mid-30s and can be found in her garden alongside her long-term partner and her thriving, young adult daughter in Kawartha Lakes. While her partner did not know about her previous life at first, Jade eventually told him. He was “surprised” but accepting.

The generational trauma is in the past. She is highly thought of in her public service job, having left sex work about six years ago. “Life is good.”

And Jade’s current relationship with God? She’s anti-religion. “Why would God put me through this traumatic childhood that I went through?”

Jade probably would agree with the Victorian-era social thinker John Ruskin, then, that “morality does not depend on religion.”

Herbal medicines and nature fill her spare time now.

“Being out in the forest is very therapeutic.”

“The earth is very healing.”

While Jennifer Jade worked for herself and was never trafficked, many women are. It involves the exploitation of a woman through force, fraud, or coercion for the purpose of commercial sex. Women’s Resources Kawartha Lakes is available to help those who’ve been trafficked to escape and build new lives of dignity and self-sufficiency. Call 1-800-565-5350