Valerie Julian is about to say goodbye to St. Andrews United Church in Port Moody — for the second time.
This time, the circumstances will be much better than Julian’s first farewell, when the church on St. Johns Street burned down a few days after she got married there in 1955.
Julian, 85, will be among the dozens of parishioners past and present who will be attending a celebration of the church building tomorrow (Saturday) afternoon as the congregation prepares to move to temporary digs at Kinsight in Port Coquitlam beginning Dec. 2. They’ll be there for about two years while the old structure is demolished and a four-storey affordable housing complex — which will include office space for Kinsight and Share Family and Community Services, along with a 540-square metre home for the church is erected in its place.
Julian said she’ll miss the convenience of the current church, which is a short walk from her home. But the redevelopment of the site to create affordable housing is part of a much bigger sense of community and openness that attracted her to join the congregation with her family soon after they moved to Port Moody from Vanderhoof in 1943.
She said back then, Sunday school skating parties, games nights and dances in the lunch room at the nearby Flavelle cedar mill, and the rousing choir practises when the aging Scottish minister just couldn’t keep up with the youthful voices, created a welcoming warmth that has been a constant in her life.
That sense of open-armed acceptance is what Amy Carruthers said attracted her to the church when she recently returned to Port Moody after several difficult years away. She was pregnant with her first child and single but the church’s community was instantly supportive, helping her get settled, ensuring she could make it to appointments. And that didn’t stop when her son, David, was born four months ago. In fact, she said, he’s the apple of the congregation’s eye.
“They helped me feel connected,” Carruthers said.
Building those connections and nurturing them to create community have always been what St. Andrews has been about, said its pastor, Julie LeBrun. That’s what led the church to get involved with the Tri-Cities Bridge Shelter program a number of years ago to provide emergency shelter, food and dry clothes for up to 30 homeless people a night.
The program ended in 2015 but it planted a seed in the church’s community to find its own way to address the affordable housing crisis, which ultimately led to its partnership with Kinsight, Share and Catalyst Community Developments Society, a Vancouver-based non-profit that specializes in working with community organizations and municipal governments to build affordable rental homes.
Peter deGroot admits he was hesitant when St. Andrews first opened the doors of its basement hall to homeless people but once he started talking with some of them and learning their stories, he jumped in to help as a volunteer for seven years.
“We were helping people and it’s about looking after the less fortunate,” he said, adding that feeling of fellowship in the church is so strong, he and his wife, Diane, have continued to attend St. Andrews even as they moved from Coquitlam’s Maillardville neighbourhood to Pitt Meadows, where they live a five-minute walk from another United church.
LeBrun said the St. Andrews community extends far beyond the 80 or so members of its congregation to include those people who attend programs like 12-step addictions counselling.
“People connect to the church in ways that are meaningful to themselves,” she said.
She added that she’s confident the connections will stay strong despite the upheaval expected over the next two years.
The congregation, she said, has a can-do spirit that causes it to embrace every challenge that comes along, including its innovative solution to help ease some of the region’s housing affordability challenges.
“This project says 'yes' to life,” she said. “My role is not to be afraid and to just go with it.”
• The St. Andrews community celebration begins Saturday at 1 p.m., with words of welcome scheduled at 1:30 p.m. An hour later, members of the community will be invited to share their memories of the church, followed by a sing-a-long at 3:30 p.m. The church, which is located at 2318 St. Johns St., is also holding a moving sale the following Saturday, Nov. 17, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.
