Live at the Rogue

St. James Community Square
Vancouver
In 1928, it was the St. James United Church, but since 1993, St. James Community Square has been a dedicated hub for artists, activists and community groups of all kinds in the Kitsilano neighbourhood on the West Side of Vancouver. It’s a humble building with multipurpose rooms, a daycare centre and a kitchen, but the centrepiece is that former church space: a beautiful wood-paneled hall with arched rafters and soaring ceilings, a stage, a piano, stained glass windows and a small balcony. Dedicated as the Mel Lehan Hall, named after a prominent local community member, the space is regularly home to the Rogue Folk Club which, in non-pandemic times, hosts regular concerts of local and touring folk, roots and Celtic musicians. Rogue Folk has hosted everyone from Loudon Wainwright III to Irish Mythen and Le Vent du Nord to Birds of Chicago at the Mel Lehan Hall.

Independent promoters can also rent the Mel Lehan Hall, which is how I saw Bahamas play for the first time in 2010, as well as Basia Bulat, Cold Specks and more. But it was seeing the Blow, a Portland-based indie-pop band, in 2008 that inspired me to form a more personal relationship with St. James Community Square. The Blow’s “Parentheses” was one of “our” songs in the beginning of my relationship with my then fiancé/now husband, Carlos. Seeing the band live, in the warmth and intimacy of the hall — strands of small glowing lights around the stage, a mix of wooden pew benches and chairs throughout the room, the feeling of creativity and communion within the crowd — it felt like we had found a kind of home. We were casually on the lookout for a wedding venue that made sense and that night we found it.

Rhododenrons bloom outside St. James Community Square. (St. James Community Square/Facebook)
We’ve returned to the Mel Lehan Hall at St. James Community Square countless times over the years, and in 2019 we rented it all over again to celebrate our 10th anniversary. In fact, one of the last shows we saw in 2020 before the pandemic closed too many doors was Jim Byrnes playing a fundraiser for the Rogue Folk Club. We took my Grandma (she loves Jim’s music and his storytelling style) and I even won a door prize. Sacred spaces are what we make of them, and St. James Community Square is one of mine.

— Andrea Warner, CBC Music