TORONTO

Call this a happy Christmas for the Happy Hooker.

And some long-earned redemption, too.

The famous former call girl and madam, who these days goes by her birth name Vera de Vries, may not live in Canada anymore but at 70, she was admittedly surprised to live long enough to see the normally rigid Supreme Court throw out several prostitution laws.

“My Happy Hooker days are many moons behind me and I am not really up to date with new rules and regulations,” she said from Holland.

She certainly understood the old ones.

Known in the 1960s and ’70s as Xaviera Hollander, aka the Happy Hooker, she was thrown out of both the United States and Canada for her pioneering sexual enterprises.

Those efforts included the Happy Hooker book, which later led to a movie, and also 35 years of writing a monthly Call Me Madam column for Penthouse magazine.

Needless to say, when word broke last week the court had backed up the concerns of three Canadian sex trade workers that in essence decriminalizes prostitution, being a madam or running a brothel, she was ecstatic.

“After all, in principle, prostitution is under normal circumstances a victimless crime,” she said. “If two consenting adults agree to exchange money in return for sex, that should be their business.”

Business being the key word for Vera. She never thought of anything she did as a crime.

But she knows crime does exist in prostitution.

“What ruins it all are the horrid pimps who often lure underage girls into prostitution, also often using physical cruelty and promises they never live up to.”

The previous rules were not stopping that.

She and others are hopeful that when the federal government rewrites the criminal statutes they focus more on that than on either the sex trade workers or the customers seeking the service.

One person who she believes will help ensure that is Nevada Bunny Ranch owner Dennis Hof, who told the Toronto Sun’s Maryam Shah last week that he plans to travel north in the new year to scout out possible locations to expand.

“I’d like to be involved in this process as they’re putting this together,” said Hof.

De Vries says his advice could help the transition.

“Dennis Hof has been a good friend of mine throughout the years and visited Holland often,” she said. “I can only say that it will be a blessing if Dennis will ever get permission to open a legitimate brothel in Toronto. It will be classy, clean, sexy, naughty and most of all safe and free of pimps or drug dealers or even slavery.

“Dennis will be the man to look after many women.”

And while many have been contacting her since the Supreme Court decision last Friday and telling her it may be time for a Happy Hooker franchise of brothels in Canada, she’s pretty happy where she is, de Vries said.

“Ms. Xaviera Hollander presently has a lovely bohemian style bed and breakfast in Amsterdam called Xaviera’s Happy House,” she said.

If someone wants to bring an escort to check in, it’s their own business but the legendary lady of the night who lived in Toronto in the ’70s and married a Canadian says she is no longer directly involved in the sex business.

“I have been out of the Happy Hooker business since the early ’70s but still am proud to count amongst my best girlfriends worldwide some of America’s most famous sex goddesses who all got famous shortly after the Happy Hooker became a worldwide best seller,” she said.

The hall of fame list includes Veronica Vera, who has a school for “boys who want to be girls,” and fellow living legend Annie Sprinkle who “still is a sexual performance artist.” And there’s Norma Jean Almodovar, who rose to fame with her book From Cop to Call Girl in the 1970s and Betty Dodson, who “now in her 80s,” does workshops on sex for one, as well as film producer Candida Royale and sex author Tracy Quan.

De Vries mentions these women because they are the ones who were the trailblazers to move the needle away from criminalizing prostitution into a regulation approach.

They are all pioneers.

And now three remarkable if not persistent Canadian women — Terri-Jean Bedford, Amy Lebovitch and Valerie Scott — can be added to that legendary list with Hollander and the others.

Thousands of miles away there’s one iconic former hooker who was kicked out of Canada for doing what the court now says is not illegal.

And she is very happy about that.