Bad Date: The Lost Girls of Vancouver's Low Track

by Trevor Greene

Vancouver’s downtown East-side neighborhood, the poorest postal code in Canada, is a ten-block compound of poverty, pain, and despair in a sparkling, healthy, rich city. In the parlance of the street, this area is known as Low Track, where drug-addicted prostitutes barely sustain themselves and their habit by selling their bodies. Suspended in the miasma of smoke and despair and the stench that hangs over these mean streets is the mystery of thirty-one Low Track prostitutes who appear to have vanished over the past few years, without a trace. Theories abound about serial killers and murderous freighter crews, while some speculate that some of the women shook their drug habit and just walked away from the life. In Trevor Greene’s illuminating book, Bad Date: The Lost Girls of Vancouver’s Low Track, he writes about this true-life mystery. Having interviewed the families of the missing women and the police involved in the case, he comes up with some possible explanations of what might have happened. There are no bodies, no eyewitnesses, and no clues. Just a void where thirty-one women once were, families and friends left behind, and a mystery that has the women still working Low Track watching their backs and fearing the night.

Genres: History, True Crime, Nonfiction

250 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2001

Reviews

[Patricia · Rating 4 out of 5]

At first I thought this was a re-hash of the Pickton case, almost a prequel as it was written before that was (completely?) solved. No, it goes much deeper than that. It is a fascinating, compassionate and well-written account of some of his victims and life and drugs in that area of Vancouver. Very glad I read it.

[Em · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting read. The book provides a view of Vancouver's missing women situation before Robert Pickton was considered a suspect related to their disappearances, at least publicly.