Fountain Chapel

The Fountain Chapel was a church located at 823 Jackson Avenue in Vancouver, British Columbia from 1918 until 1985. It was the local chapter of the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME) and was co-founded by Nora Hendrix (grandmother of guitarist Jimi Hendrix) to serve Vancouver’s black community. Although not officially designated a heritage structure, the building is the sole remnant of the black community that once flourished in this part of Vancouver.

Prior to the establishment of the Fountain Chapel, black Christians held services in rented halls around town, and eventually a small group decided they should have a permanent church of their own. They set out to raise funds for the project and arranged for AME to match the amount raised locally. Once financing was secured, they purchased the building on Jackson Avenue that was built in 1903 and had served as a Lutheran church for German and Scandinavian immigrants. [Daphne Marlatt and Carole Itter, eds., "Opening Doors: Vancouver's East End", Victoria, BC: Aural History Program, 1979. An online excerpt of Nora Hendrix's description of the Chapel's origins can be read [http://hogansalleyproject.blogspot.com/2006/03/nora-hendrix-so-let-me-see-it-could-be.html here] .]

AME is a well-established Christian denomination that was founded in 1816 by African Americans in response to the racism they encountered in non-segregated churches. As such, AME was an important institution for black opposition to antebellum slavery and anti-black racism generally.

AME's activist tradition continued in Vancouver. The church was the locus for organizing against racism on more than one occasion. In the 1922-1923 trial of Fred Deal, a railroad porter charged with murdering Vancouver police constable and Victoria Cross recipient Robert McBeath, the congregation of the Fountain Chapel mobilized to ensure that the likelihood Deal was racially targeted by police was accounted for in the verdict. Consequently, the case was re-tried and Deal’s original death sentence was reduced to life in prison. [Lani Russwurm, "Black and Blue, Life and Death," "Republic of East Vancouver", nos. 181 and 182 (February 2008) [http://republic-news.org/archive/181-repub/181_russwurm.htm Part I] and [http://republic-news.org/archive/182-repub/182_russwurm.html Part II] .] In another case in the 1950s, the Fountain Chapel was used to voice the black community’s demands for an inquiry into the police beating of Clarence Clemons, a black longshoreman, who died shortly after the incident in question. [Ross Lambertson, "The Black, Brown, White, and Red Blues: The Beating of Clarence Clemons," "Canadian Historical Review" 85, no. 4 (December 2004): 755-776.]

The black community that had geographically coalesced around the Fountain Chapel in the city’s East End was displaced during the city’s slum clearance programs of the 1950s and 1960s. In 1985, not long after Nora Hendrix’s death, AME sold the building, which has since housed the Basel Hakka Lutheran Church. The building is situated at the eastern edge of what was once Hogan’s Alley. Although it is not designated a heritage building, the former Fountain Chapel building is the sole structural marker that there was ever a vibrant black community in Vancouver’s East End (today’s Strathcona neighbourhood).

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