How a B.C. non-profit is helping bar and nightlife patrons stay safe

This past March, The Keefer Bar customers sipping Dragon’s Eye Mules and Café Bastille Martinezes were having a good night out, while also supporting Good Night Out (GNO). The Vancouver non-profit has a champion in World Class Canada Bartender of the Year 2025, The Keefer Bar’s Kate Chernoff, who in collaboration with Ketel One’s Garnished with Good program created two fundraising cocktails to support a group that has been making music festivals, bars and clubs safer from sexual harassment and violence for the past nine years.

GNO might be most recognizable to nightlife patrons for its pink-clad teams sharing bottles of water and safety support on Vancouver’s Granville Street and in downtown Victoria on weekends.

But its impact is also felt in the back-of-house of venues across Canada. GNO offers training to the staff of music festivals and clubs, bars and restaurants on how to prevent, spot and respond to gendered harassment and abuse in their locations. That can include anything from comments and unwanted attention to drug-facilitated sexual abuse, from alcohol over-consumption to drink-spiking.

A Parallel 49 Brewing Company staff member wrote glowingly to GNO after completing its certification training, with a cold hard truth of the industry. “Hospitality is an industry that does have a dark side of persistent harassment, and the problem won’t be addressed by the big companies unless there is a level of compliance tied to it.” In 2025, April 23 was declared Safe Spaces Hospitality Day in the City of Vancouver, recognizing local businesses that have audited their space through a CoV-funded program called Last Call and obtained credentials from Good Night Out.

Those businesses are featured on a map on the non-profit’s website, helping customers make informed decisions about the businesses they support (goodnightoutvancouver.com/partners). For nightlife patrons, GNO also offers community workshops on topics like consent, substance abuse and bystander intervention.

Welcoming Spaces

GNO started “out of a love for night life, out of a love for live music, out of a love for those experiences in social spaces in Vancouver,” says executive director Stacey Forrester, who collaborated with co-founder Ashtyn Bevan on what was originally a student project for Bevan in 2016.

“It was really born from a common experience to reflect on all of the amazing nights out we had, and how easily that can be ruined, how one comment, one gesture, one action, can really ruin an otherwise good experience,” Forrester says. GNO in B.C. started as the Canadian chapter of the same-named UK organization that generously shared some of its tools and resources. Around the same time, the Ontario organization the Dandelion Initiative, which folded in 2022, began doing similar work in that province.

Generations of imbibers, particularly women, have internalized the burden of ensuring their own safety at night, whether by moderating consumption or guarding their drinks to stay safe. “If that was all it took, we would have eradicated the problem by now,” Forrester says.

A former nurse who previously worked extensively on Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, Forrester believes that B.C.’s relatively progressive values and a higher awareness of creating safer, protective spaces has allowed GNO to flourish in the province, where it takes a 360-degree approach of educating hospitality staff, customers and bystanders.

She emphasizes, though, that even a GNO workshop isn’t a one-stop solution for any business. “The reality is, it takes culture change, and culture change is very slow.” There’s a risk that venues that have already experienced risks and problems will treat GNO training as a shield or as a badge indicating that they’ve “fixed” a problem. “We do have guardrails around that,” Forrester says, emphasizing that prevention and training are the way forward for businesses.

A poster in the bathroom or a few lines at the bottom of a menu, reminding patrons how a bar or club wants people to feel and act in the space, can bring awareness and even create a deterrent. “Over the years, we’ve seen places be really creative, with house rules or messaging created as little works of art, so safety messaging is built into the going-out experience,” Forrester says.

A healthy bottom line might just be the common-sense driver for businesses seeking GNO certification. “Whether you’re feminist-minded or not, to create a space that’s welcoming to many more customers is just good business,” Forrester says.

—by Charlene Rooke